As Bazil had guessed, the rain stopped in the following days. Three days later to be exact. By this time the Grass had managed to extend a root quite far following the flowing water but hadn’t reached any body of the stuff yet. And even if water was still present above ground and the earth was still heavily wet, Bazil knew the return of the shining sun would quickly dry the area and greatly limit its water supply.

On the other side, it would finally be able to efficiently work on its Photosynthesis Skill. Using it to absorb sunlight through rain clouds was highly unproductive but nonetheless granted Bazil with energy. The sentient plant was assuming that direct exposure to sunlight would raise the efficacy of the Skill. Not a very hard guess to make and to verify, it just had to wait and see.

In the meantime, Bazil kept on working on its mental Skills, and on shaping the bulb it had underground to stock nutrients and water. It decided to give it a shape as it got bigger. The simple shape of a potato was too boring and since Bazil was a mighty pervert and a former male representative of humanity, it chose to grow it the shape of a dick. A hard and big erect one with the sweetest part of it in the tip. The lewd thoughts ensuing made the deviant lose a bit of time.

That was the extent of Bazil fun those last three days, that and its dream-harem and torture mind-chamber.

Even if having all this time was good for training mental Skills, not forgetting the physical growth, it was still extremely boring. It had been more than ten days since Bazil’s rebirth and the only thing it had to do besides what it did every second of each minute of each hour of each day was to talk to Greeny…

And that was only two hours a week.

In short, Bazil was starting to grow too bored for its mind to keep on entertaining itself with only fantasies. It had to find something new to do. Or else it would grow mad. One could obviously and easily argue Bazil was already a crazy fucker, but it had its own kind of twisted sense to it and it did not want to grow completely insane.

This explained why it was currently going through the Skill store, again, the third consecutive time to be precise, hoping against all odds to see something both interesting and helpful in its current situation. It felt to the former Human a bit like browsing, again and again, the list of stuff on a widely used streaming video provider for chilling and finally not watching anything.

Resigning itself Bazil closed the Skill store and opened its Status to check at it. Again.

[Name: Bazileus Maximilian Alexander Daqueduc

Unspent Skill point: 1

Racial Class: Grass - Level 6

- Growth - Level 12
- Photosynthesis - Level 3
- Strengthen structure - Level 2

General Skills:

- Botanic - Level 4
- Improved senses - Level 4
- Meditation - Level 5
- Mathematics - Level 5
- Outworlder - Level 1
- Visualization - Level 8]

Bazil had advanced a bit in the last three days, but not as fast as in the previous ones. Currently lacking motivation and short term goals, it had focused less and had, therefore, slowed its progress.

Nevertheless, it persevered in its training. It still had long term goals, even if those were really far away. And now that the sun was starting to appear through the clouds Bazil could feel its light on its leaves.

It was like a warm and comfy touch, a quite welcome change after the cold and wet softness of the water and cold and muddy earthiness of the ground. Basking in the small ray of sunlight touching it Bazil was momentarily reminded of a faraway time.

It remembered how when it was still a little human child it had sometimes gone to the beach in summer and lay on the sand with its family. Those were among the few good memories it had of its parents. Not that it had a lot of memories of them anyway.

Stopping there its journey down Memory Lane, Bazil found the strength to focus on its underused Photosynthesis Skill and tried to absorb as much sunlight as it could. It was not only replenishing its energy reserves at a far higher rate than before but also lifting its spirit.

Was this a peculiarity of plants? Did they get kind of depressed when deprived of sunlight too long and their mood would magically lift when the sun would show itself? Or was it simply the change of scenery in Bazil’s perceivable environment? Maybe it was simply having been reminded of easier and happier times. Or a bit of all of the above?

Anyway, being able to focus on something a bit different allowed Bazil to regain its spirit and to go back to training and growing.

The sentient plant managed to keep this new training up for the rest of the week and was impatiently waiting for Greeny to engage a conversation. According to its Mathematics and twisted sense of time, she should be there soon.

Any moment now.

No more than a few seconds.

She was about to come by.

[Hey!
How is my favorite blade of grass doing?
Good I see.]

Greeny! I’m so glad to hear you! Bazil greeted the voice in its head and the green text it perceived in its mind with real pleasure. Finally, it would be able to talk to Greeny.

It was torture to wait for you.

[For me too!
I hate Hirtole and my sisters for forcing me to not talk to you when I want!
They’re assholes!]

Bazil noted the anger in the girly voice, and not wanting to have an unpleasant conversation, it tried to comfort Greeny a bit.

Come on. Assholes they may be, but they do not deserve your hate. You are better than them.

[Ooow.
You’re so sweet.
And not only your words.
I can see that you have sweets in you.
Wink wink.]

Why are you saying ‘wink wink’? And how come I ‘see’ it slightly differently?

[‘Cause I can’t really wink.
Silly!]

Ha! It’s so good to talk to you. Bazil laughed. It was truly enjoying the youthful attitude of Greeny, talking to her helped it remove a lot of the stress it had about its situation.

I know you can’t tell me a lot about the System, and I’m sorry for asking you. But I’d like to know more about level caps. You mentioned them last time and I’d hate to be blocked without knowing it. So can you tell me? Pretty please?

[Raah!
Can’t tell you lot!
Sorry!
Just that if you reach it you should know it.
You’ll feel blocked in your soul.
And you can break through the caps by simply expanding your understanding of the Skill.
Or by using a Skill point.
But don’t do that.
Unless you’re in a pinch and have no other choices.
Can’t tell you more…
Sorry…
Snirfl…]

Oy! Are you crying? I forbid you to cry for this! Bazil immediately reacted when hearing its only friend in distress.

[But I want to help you!
And I can’t!
It makes me so sick!
And so sad!
Sniiiirfl!]

It’s not your fault if you can’t tell me more. You’re already a great help. You know that. I know that you know that. You know that I know that you know that. I know that you know that I know that you know that, and so on. If you weren’t there I would have gone completely bunker, I’m absolutely alone if not for you. I need you to be strong so I can rely on you and be strong too! Bazil started a pep-talked as it tried its best to comfort the higher entity that was Greeny.

The conversation kept on going with exchanges between the two lonely souls and by the end of it, the two beings were feeling better about their respective circumstances.

And once again Bazil managed to get a tiny but useful bit of information about its current location. But even less than during each of its previous meetings with Greeny, as it had been too focused on lifting Greeny’s spirit. It nevertheless now knew that the next rains weren’t expected before long. It meant it had to quickly find a water supply. Its resources, while impressive for Bazil’s size, wouldn’t last very long once the earth around it would dry.

Like last time Bazil only managed to get a tiny bit of information regarding its forced environment from Greeny. Useful information yes, but the sentient plant was forced to notice that each meeting with the green entity was less and less informative. Not only that! The brave little Grass also had to use a part of the too-short time to lift the girl spirit. As much as Bazil liked Greeny, it was still tiring in this necessary evil.

Putting this matter aside, as it could do nothing about it yet, the sentient vegetable refocused on a more urgent and critical object. Water! The rain would stop soon and that meant Bazil had to hurry up and find a new source of the blue liquid. For even if the dick-shaped potato was full of liquidity, once the earth around would dry up it would not last long.

It would also be harder to extract nutrients from dry earth than wet soil. Bazil didn’t fully understand how it worked, but its Botanic Skill linked the phenomenon to something called ‘osmosis’. It reminded it of chemical classes back on Earth.

Thinking about that, Bazil momentarily forwent all of its training and focus entirely on growing its elongated root. The root it had started to send in the way of the flowing water. Its theory was that if the water was going somewhere, that somewhere would have more water, be it a river, a pond, or whatever.

Bazil may even decide to relocate there if the situation was more favorable. It would certainly be a loss to abandon the result of its efforts, but relocating to a better place was a thing of life. For now, its stolon, as the Botanic Skill informed it that this kind of root was called, kept on growing at an astounding speed by Bazil standards.

Bazil’s situation remained unchanged for ten more days before it finally broke into something new.

Growing, mental Skills training, absorbing sunlight, growing some more, talking the one time to Greeny, gathering nutrients.

Bazil had had a lot of luck that the water didn’t evaporate too quickly after the rain stopped. There was more water coming from higher up and the flow decreased for four days before stopping entirely. Six days later Bazil’s stolon hadn’t reached the water pool it was hoping for, but its extended root system allowed it to keep on absorbing enough water from the still somewhat wet ground. As well as providing it with some more nutrients.

And on this subject, the sentient plant was having a new reason to worry. If it absorbed and used all the nutrients in the soil, it would soon be starving. Bazil knew little about fertilizer but its Botanic Skill was expanding its knowledge of it. The most probable fertilizers in the wild would be dead foliage from taller and older plants, dead creatures, or the manure of said creatures. Better ground would be a good reason to relocate.

And since Bazil hated the idea of being covered in some random animal excrements and there didn’t seem to be any way of getting humus without moving, it was excited about the new notifications it had.

[Skill Photosynthesis has reached level 8.
Racial Class Grass has reached level 10.
You have reached level 10 in a Class.
Choose one of the following Skills:
- Blooming
- Medicinal
- Nutritious
- Phytohormones secretion
- Poisonous
You have gained a Skill point.]

Bazil had reached level ten in its racial Class. It was granted a Skill point, putting its stock at two. But most importantly it was offered new Skills to choose from.

The list of available Skill for its level up contained the two previously unchosen Skills, meaning that even if Bazil didn’t buy those Skills with the Skill store, it could still acquire them if nothing was interesting in the new Skills. And since it had three new Skills in the list Bazil guessed that every five Class levels it would be presented with three new Skills to choose from.

Bazil assumed that the Medicinal Skill would make him more interesting to people. But since it would probably be able to produce some healing effect thanks to the Botanic Skill knowledge, Bazil put this Skill in the same category as the Nutritious one. Skills useful for when it would manage to enter society as a tool to ingratiate people to it, but who were double-edged swords as they could bring on the plant unwanted attention. Bazil would be a slave driver, not a slave itself.

The Phytohormones secretion Skill could probably also be covered with the Botanic Skill, Bazil realized how lucky it had been to be able to acquire such a Skill so early in its development. But since it would probably allow it some kind of communication it was far more interesting than the previous Skills. Plants did communicate by pheromones, at least its Botanic Skill told Bazil so.

Bazil wasted a few minutes picturing plants gossiping by smell. ‘Hey, you smell good today.’ ‘You smelled the news?’ ‘Did someone smelled Rose recently? I haven’t smelled her for a while.’

Focusing back on its choice, the plant was once again tempted by the Poisonous Skill, especially with the fact that Bazil may need to kill to obtain fertilizer. It would quite like to be some kind of carnivorous plant.

Finally, it let the Blooming Skill. Obviously, it would allow Bazil to grow flowers. And what use did flowers have? Well, for starters they were nice to look at, therefore a useful tool for seduction, secondly they were the primary way of reproduction between plants of Bazil’s kind. Thirdly, and that was what interested Bazil the more here, flowers were used to attract animals. Some insects were drawn to some colors, adding to that potential uses of the Phytohormone secretion Skill to reinforce it with smells, and Bazil could bait insects to come to it. It would have to find a way to kill them, but wasn’t poison a good idea then? And Bazil could grow in a form to make a trap for the flying bugs.

A plan started to form in the Grass’ mind. Or rather a schematic in its Visualization Skill.

Bazil then chose to get the Phytohormones secretion Skill for its free Skill and to buy the Poisonous one. It decided that the blooming could wait a bit.

[New Skill: Phytohormones secretion - Level 1.
New Skill: Poisonous - Level 1.]

Armed with the knowledge and the ability of its two new Skills and combining them with its already acquired ones, Bazil set to grow a trap for flies and other carrion-eater bugs.

It divided a simple pitfall-trap variation that made it think a lot about some pocket monsters from a well-known video game. Bazil would secret in the air some odor of rotting animal to attract some stupid bugs. Hopefully, any dangerous and big animal that could be attracted to this too would prove uninterested in a plant. The insects would climb in a big pitcher, simply a folded leaf, and go at the bottom of it to get their meal. But there they would be stuck by sticking stuff and poisoned to death. Then Bazil could digest them outside of its body and passively absorb the nutrients from their body. Bazil also colored the leaf according to what its Botanic Skill told would be improving the trap. Little did it know how more visible it became.

Another downfall Bazil hadn’t thought about was that in the environment it was located, such a trap would need a high amount of water.

By the time Bazil had finished growing its trap, it had gained a few levels more and was kind of bothered by the slowing speed of some Skill leveling, mainly the Growth one. It had stopped at level twenty. Was that the infamous level cap? Bazil would soon have the possibility to ask Greeny and even if the ‘girl’ would probably not directly answer it, Bazil may find a way to get the information in the conversation.

It would know the following day.

A silver lining to this situation was that Bazil had managed to quickly level its Poisonous Skill and greatly improve its noxious chemicals.

But now it had to wait for a bug to enter its trap and provide the plant with its first ‘meaty’ meal on this world.

Not wanting to waste time by simply waiting, Bazil focused again on the growth of its stolon. Maybe it would soon reach water? The extended root was already several meters long, the wet stuff could not be that far away. Right?

Hirt would not screw Bazil that much on its start just to piss off Gronarityuerocjequa? The God had bought souls from another universe to spice things on this planet. Bazil dying from thirst just like that would be damn boring. The sentient grass had to believe this, or else it would be one more thing to drive it insane in its dire situation.

For now, Bazil forced itself to stop thinking about higher beings and to train its mental Skills as well as keeping on growing its stolon.