Chapter 2318 Water Pressure

--- Kat ---

Transforming into water to deal with getting snapped up by a fish seems like the obvious idea until it starts to suck you down into its gullet. A much larger one then Kat had expected if the suction force was anything to go by. Kat stopped her transformation and started to burn everything around her. With the pearl in the centre gone it seemed like the best way to escape. Freezing the walls around her so they could be punched through let Kat escape in no time at all.

Then she just had to find another plant and make a more successful cut. This would prove to be a massive pain the ass. Kat’s next attempt at getting the pearl had her slice a bit lower, ensuring that she got the entire pearl. She also got a bit of green. Just a tiny bit. It wasn’t even the full stem, just a tiny fraction of it left at the edge because of the angle of the cut. Apparently even that was still enough for the pearl in her hand to wither away, practically disintegrating in her hand as it dispersed into the water.

So Kat tried again, and again, and again. Five further attempts all leaving her with failure... and the annoying truth that it might just not be possible for her to make this cut. Her fans were sharp sure... but not particularly thin. They were never designed for this type of work and Kat had stopped using them after the third failed attempt with them. Her nails could in theory do the same job...

But ’in theory’ and ’in practice’ were not the same thing. Her nails were sharp, sure, but they also weren’t that long. She had no way to extend them, and Kat couldn’t find the correct way to cut the plant apart when using them. Perhaps there wasn’t one, or perhaps she was just missing some. Kat didn’t exactly have great practice at this.

Of the four attempts made with her fingers, the first didn’t even cut all the way through the stem, leaving it just sort of hanging there. The orb then seemed to drain away into the stem, and would likely get reformed later... but later wasn’t now. Though Kat did pry her way out of its mouth without burning her way through, just in case later was fast enough.

For the second attempt made with her fingers, she tried to simply pull the orb away. This was an even bigger failure as the orb, instead of being at all solid like other attempts, quickly drained away its internal contents, deflating it like an empty balloon. Once again, easy for it to repair, but not something Kat could actually use. So she moved on.

Next time, Kat tried to grasp it once again, but by keeping her nails empowered and trying to ’snip’ it at the base. Sadly, Kat once again sliced into the orb itself. Her nails apparently cutting thin lines into it as she tried to get to the base to cut it away. It was annoying because Kat actually had a moment where she thought she’d grabbed it successfully, but when the suctions came the internals were pulled out through the tiny gaps in the bottom, allowing for the plant to suck in all the missing nutrients or whatever it was that rested inside the orbs.

So on to the final attempt, Kat spent more time looking the orb over. She tried to figure out every possible way to cut into it. She considered her fans and her nails. She considered the water, and demonic fire. She considered everything... even waking up Lily. Though with that last one, Kat decided that she’d make one more attempt without asking for help.

So that’s what this would be. A final attempt to do this by herself. Kat ultimately decided that her ’grasp’ technique was most likely to work. She just had to be fast. Using demonic energy to slow everything down, Kat slipped her fingers onto the orb and pulled while twisting her hand and pinching it down so that her nails would cut through the stem at the bottom. As Kat finished the motion, she looked at the orb... and there, right at the bottom, was a fucking speck of grin.

Kat wanted to cry as the damn thing disappeared in her hands. Again. She was under water too so nobody would even notice. The fact that when she dragged her ass out of the water it might look like tear tracks in some spots was entirely coincidence, and her skin made sure they didn’t stick around regardless of everything else. Sighing, Kat handed over everything else and then plonked herself on the ground to start wringing out her outfit. She could just vanish and resummon them to remove the water in an instant... but Kat kinda felt like soaking in the misery for a bit at least.

"So... how important are those glowing orbs?" As soon as she said it Kat checked her bracelet, and found it was still going strong. She hadn’t refreshed in a while either... weird. Regardless though... "I tried, and tried, and tried but I just couldn’t get them with my current tools. If you’ve got a knife I can take another crack at it. I think there are some more of those things in the other direction... but I’m not certain I can get them even with the knife. My fans are too thick, and I didn’t manage it with nails either.

"Honestly, Lily might have the best shot, with her able to manipulate the shape and sharpness of her shadows but I’m not certain of that and she’ll have a far more limited time available to her under the water. You could take a crack at it as well... but there’s a lot of fish and I’m not sure you can easily escape from the plant if it snapped shut on you."

Appoline nodded, bobbing her ears a bit as she did. "It’s... well not ideal, they are probably the best ingredient here, but probably not the most important? Essential? Something like that. Still... hmm... it would be nice but I’m not certain even I’m capable of harvesting it. There is a special kind of knife that you’d normally use for things like that orb. It’s not perfect, and you can get even more specialised ones for each plant that has something like it...

"But I don’t have either of them on me. My copy was probably destroyed, or at least, it’s not accessible too me and even with my higher skill in harvesting I’m not certain my knife will be good enough either,"

"Wait then why did you even ask me?" queried Kat.

"Because it’s entirely possible you manage it. I’ve seen you do a number of things I would have considered impossible, and I considered it likely enough you’d succeed that I asked for some. There is also the fact that I had no way to know if the orb reacts to touch, or mana. As you contain no mana yourself, it was possible that you could just grab it without issue and the plant wouldn’t care because it has no way to react to something as strong as you that doesn’t contain mana. Obviously it doesn’t work that way as you’ve just shown, but it was a solid enough guess," explained Appoline.

Kat nodded, "And do you think Lily could manage it if I woke her up?"

Appoline shrugged, "Look, I’ve never had to harvest from that particular plant before. I have seen similar ones, and I have n idea what sort of ingredient it would be... but I have no experience here. It’s possible she can manage it without trouble, but more likely it’s going to take her a bunch of attempts."

Kat glanced at her sleeping girlfriend. "So... do we want to try then?"

"You seem surprisingly willing to wake her," offered Appoline.

"Yeah well, Lily can go to sleep whenever she wants, she’s had plenty of rest already, and I don’t think she’ll mind. It’s not like before, nowadays waking up is an easy thing and getting back to sleep is even easier for her so while I don’t like to do it for no reason, if there is one neither of us mind," explained Kat.

Kat gently poked Lily awake. It was rather cute to watch. After the third poke, Lily caught Kat’s finger between her limbs and tried to wrap herself around it. Kat just poked Lily with her other hand. This did eventually wake her up, and from there, Kat quickly explained the situation. Appoline was after an ingredient that Kat was sadly, unable to acquire for them. It was now up to her to do it... though it might mean getting wet. That would depend on how well her shadows could stretch and what she could manage from a distance.

[Well why don’t you just hop back in the water to direct me then? I just need A set of eyes down there, they don’t need to be mine after all.]