“Yes, just like that. Now just push into it like dipping your honey-covered finger into tea!”

“I… I’m not sure I follow,” said the goblin holding a cloud of mana in her hands.

“It’s simple! All you have to do is poke it to transform it!”

“I… Well, okay. Like… this?”

The cloud shivered and shook, but then went back to being still.

“No no no! Don’t just shake it whole! Reach into it!”

“Uhhh…” Willow looked completely lost at that point. “I think…” She let the mana dissipate. “I think I’m missing something. Can goblins even do advanced magic like this?”

“Yeah! Anyone can learn any magic! In theory, at least,” I said as I pulled another mana fruit out of my bubble and handed it to Willow.

“Hmm, maybe I just have no talent for it.” She bit into the fruit.

“Nonsense! Even I could do it! Look!” I shot a tiny spark that immediately dissipated to demonstrate.

“Hmm…” She frowned and continued assaulting the fruit.

“Well, let’s take a break for a bit. Maybe you’ll get inspired while doing something else.”

“Sure.” She shrugged as she munched on the fruit, before holding it up and scrutinizing it again. “Still, that was such a lucky find. Not just useful for refilling mana, but as food in general.”

“Well yeah, but if I didn’t have my ability, I would probably be stuck around that tree forever.” I grinned. “Now though, the tree is locked in here with me!”

Willow raised an eyebrow without saying anything for a second. “Speaking of which, is that tree still even alive? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have any nutrients inside your bubble.”

“Hmm… well, when I feel around, it’s still there.” I frowned. “But… huh?”

“What?”

“Oh, crap.” I grabbed Willow’s hand and spirited us into the bubble world.

Right as we landed, I turned my attention to the green bubble where I put the tree. It was even more green than I remembered. And by that, I meant, the bubble was filled with greenery.

“Err… You said a tree, not an entire jungle!”

I stared at the filled bubble for a second, before robotically turning to Willow and giving her an awkward smile. “Accelerated time? Ehehe?”

A facepalm. “Fei… how long has it been since you put that tree in there?”

“Umm… a few weeks?”

“And how sped up is the time inside?”

“Err… not sure. Ten? Twenty? Thirty times? Maybe more?”

“So that tree has basically been there for months or even years…”

“Yeah…”

“Wait, that still doesn’t add up. Something like that would take a long longer than a few years to grow.”

“Uhm…” I thought for a second while looking at the jungle bubble. “I think this tree feeds off of mana, actually. And there might be some ambient mana in this space?”

“Might be…?” Her eyebrow rose.

“Well, I don’t know! It’s not like I can use it anyway, so I mostly ignored it. But… yeah, there’s probably more ambient mana inside here than in the real world.”

“Well, alright.” She resigned herself with a sigh. “Still, I feel like that bubble is gonna pop soon if the tree keeps on growing.”

Part of me wanted to see what would happen if the bubble did pop. The other part of me was very protective of my bubbles and wouldn’t dare subject my babies to such inhumane experiments.

“Well, some pruning is in order, I guess. And hey! We were slowly running out of mana fruits anyway, so this is perfect! It’s also an infinite source of food!”

“I feel like we’re exploiting a loophole. There has to be some kind of drawback to this.”

“Nah, I’m sure it’s all fine!” I waved her off and deposited us back into the real world.

Then I picked a large empty spot and took the tree out of my bubble as well. Its snaking branches made the entire thing be bubble-shaped.

“Well… do you happen to have some really big scissors?” I asked.

“No…? We’ll have to use swords.”

“Alright, fine.” I summoned forth the sword Willow gave me and held it in the tree’s direction. “It’s time for a new haircut, tree!”

I got rewarded with an eye roll from Willow. “Do you have to always go for the theatrics?”

“What are you talking about?!” I turned to face her, appalled. “What is life, but a series of theater plays?!” I pushed my chest out and put a hand on it whilst closing my eyes.

Another eye roll. This time, she didn’t say anything and got to chopping the branches instead. I followed her example and did my best to attend to the first customer of Fei barber’s inc.

“Oh, this one had a fruit on it,” Willow said and picked up the branch she just cut before plucking out the fruit attached to it. “Wait, why does this fruit look different from the others?”

“Hmm? Different?” I glanced in her direction, noticing the fruit in her hand.

“Yeah… It’s bigger… and redder.” She held the fruit up and inspected it.

She was right. For some reason, the fruit looked even riper than the ones we had been eating up till now.

In fact…

“Huh… they are all like that,” I said after looking through the thick branches and spotting more fruits.

“Supercharged from years of ambient mana inside the bubble…?” she ventured.

“Yep… seems like it. That’s great, isn’t it? It means even easier magic training for you!”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

With that revelation, I kept on happily slashing at the branches with occasional breaks to munch on the even more delicious fruits. Never had I thought trimming branches of a tree would be fun. Not just the fruits, but it also gave me an opportunity to try out some of the sword techniques Willow had shown me.

“Haiya! Houwah!” I slashed at the tree, pretending to battle a vicious monster with my ninja skills.

I ignored the goblin who kept rolling her eyes at my theatrics.

“Yah!” I did a beautiful horizontal slash, not noticing the fruit hanging nearby. My slash somehow ended up detaching the fruit and launching it through the air. 

“Ah, shit…” We both watched as it flew, and crashed right into the suspicious crystal… before getting absorbed.

The darkness inside, which was already swirling much faster than normal, started going haywire.

“Fei!”

“Uhm… Didn’t break any rules!” I yelled in my defence, even as the crystal pulsed and sent a shockwave of something through the room.

“Uwagh!” I fell onto my butt from the pressure but was immediately pulled up by Willow, who adopted a serious expression.

“We need to get out of here!”

I nodded and took one last look at the crystal, which had cracked and the darkness began to seep out of it.

BottledChaos

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