“Hey there; sorry if I’m a little late. Traffic was pretty bad,” Ryan apologized, but the dryads didn’t seem to mind. Rather, they were just very curiously looking into the boxes that Ryan and the spirits were carrying. “Come on, I’ll show you in a bit; let’s just get out of the thicket for a bit and call the others over, alright?”

  Immediately agreeing, the dryads pushed aside the vines and leaves growing over the path. As Runar had said before, they liked playing pranks, but after Ryan spoke to them a bit, they ended up listening to his requests pretty well and stopped blocking the door intentionally. Since they all lived there, the plants naturally grew a good bit faster, so it was unavoidable to some degree, but the dryads actually started helping out a bit more around this small hidden village.

  As Ryan put down the crates, plenty of people approached him, practically lining up in front of him.

  “Alright, everyone go ahead and grab a flower crown if you want to; there should be plenty of those here. For those that can’t wear one, like the sprites, we had another idea, so just come to me in a second. After that, feel free to just, you know, grab some of these flowers, put them in your home. We have some vases in the warehouse over there if you want them,” Ryan said with a smile, watching particularly the younger people excitedly grab the flower crowns. Then he turned over toward the small group of ghouls standing at the side, eagerly waiting for their turn.

  Ryan reached down and opened up one of the boxes that he had prepared especially for them. It held flower crowns with small purple and cyan flowers on them, which he quickly grabbed and brought toward the ghouls.

  Ghouls were a species that wasn’t very common even amongst all the other magical species that existed. They were, after all, artificially created by a necromancer in the long past. Nonetheless, they were a genuine species of people who lived and breathed and reproduced. Their biological functions were slowed, and they had a completely carnivorous diet. They were also the ones who spoke about the tradition of wearing flower crowns.

  Since ghouls gave off a slight scent that was akin to rot in some ways, they tried whatever they could to stop that from happening. In their old home, they would often use perfume made from a particular rare flower that was hard to get. This flower had small petals that were purple at the base and cyan at the tips. It was what these flower crowns were made of. Noticing these flowers that they hadn’t seen in so long, the ghouls looked back at Ryan with surprise.

  “How … did … you … get … these?” one of them asked, in that almost-whispered and struggling speech that many ghouls had.

  “We special-ordered them. It was pretty hard to find them, even then, though, so you’ll have to wait for a bit until we can get more,” Ryan explained, looking over at Gaia. “We also bought some seeds so we can plant some ourselves, but obviously, it will take a while for them to blossom. But once we get Gaia a bigger garden with a larger greenhouse, we should be able to—”

  “Thank … you …” another said, milky-white tears in her eyes.

  “Of course.”

  Ryan smiled at them, watching as they put on the flower crowns that he had specifically made for them. He then turned around, seeing the tiny sprites crowded around his feet. It was like a canister of motor oil was spilled around his feet.

  “Okay, you guys. Since you like to jump around and combine and split off, I figured actual flowers might not be the best for you, so I have these little things,” Ryan explained, pulling out a small box. They were filled with small individual flowers that were made into the shape of crowns for the sprites to wear. “If you want, you can just copy these.”

  While the sprites were good at copying the appearance of things, they weren’t good at altering or making things on their own, so this was the best idea that Ryan could come up with. And after just a moment, black flowers seemed to sprout on the sprites’ heads, then they excitedly ran away.

  And with that, there were just three more things that Ryan had to hand out. First, he made his way to Runar’s office down there. Runar himself was upstairs, keeping Ryan’s mom busy, but there was someone else in the office.

  He pushed the door open and stepped in. Trying to be quiet, even if the one he was trying to surprise was effectively deaf, Ryan approached the nest next to the desk. With a smile, he held a small flower hat specifically made for the small pixie Penny in front of the nest.

  Startled, she held her head out of the nest when she noticed Ryan. With a broad smile on her face, she jumped out of the nest and gave Ryan’s cheek a hug. And after seeing the small hat that Ryan made for her, she was even more excited, and promptly put it on and broadly grinned at him.

  “You’re looking very, very pretty,” he said, and though Penny most certainly didn’t understand him, she seemed to know she was being complimented. Since pixies communicated through magic, Ryan’s sociability stat seemed to help out a bit there.

  “Want to come outside with me? You’ll have to wait for me a little later, but it would be great to see you join everyone else,” Ryan said, pointing toward the door. Penny seemed hesitant but in the end nodded her head. He stepped outside, and Penny sat down on his shoulder, nervously looking around.

  Whenever Ryan passed someone, she tried to hide herself a bit by pulling Ryan’s hair in front of her, but after a while, she got used to it a little more. And then they got to the next stop, where Ryan would give out two of the metal-flower crowns he had made. Figuring it would be a good use for the copper wildflowers for now, Ryan had made some for the two beings who couldn’t use regular flowers.

  One of those was the Forge elemental. Regular flowers would just get burnt up, sitting on top of the stone dragon’s head. Though the elemental wanted to eat the flowers at first, once Ryan explained it, pointing to the crown he himself was wearing, the elemental happily left it on top of its head, curling up in its dragon form to keep sleeping so that it could keep wearing it a little longer.

  And then it was time for Ryan to meet the next one: Kindly, the corrupted mimic, sitting all alone at the outskirts of the cave.

  “Wait down here, alright? I’ll be right back,” Ryan said, and Penny nervously nodded, sitting down on the steps that were far, far too big for her. He made his way upstairs with the second pair of the metal crowns.

  Frankly, Ryan hadn’t told his uncle about this, since he wouldn’t have agreed anyway, but he wanted to do something for Kindly. Ryan came there every once in a while and just spoke to him, though there obviously was no back-and-forth.

  He pushed the door open and Kindly seemed to flinch, as he always did.

  “Hey, bud. I brought you something,” he explained, carefully placing the flower crown onto the ground in the mimic’s reach. It was specially made to fit into the grooves at the top of the wardrobe that Kindly lived in. “I’m not sure if you know about Spirit Week, but we’re celebrating Regir, the Great Spirit of Nature, today. Everyone else is wearing these, so I figured you might as well do too.”

  Kindly’s dozens of eyes blinked as the room was silent, and Ryan smiled awkwardly. “You don’t need to worry about breaking the flowers or anything. They’re made of metal. Even if they have mana, they should hold out for a couple days. Others would rot, but these are fine. I think.”

  Carefully, Kindly started reaching out to the flower crown. Even if he wouldn’t wear it, Ryan wanted to at least give this a shot. The mimic’s tentacles curled around the flowers, the black sludge of the corruption soon covering them.

  But then Kindly pulled back, hissing in pain.

  “What? Kindly, are you okay?” he asked nervously. What was going on?

  Ryan looked at the copper wildflowers. They should be overtaken by the corruption by now, but … they were fine. Rather, the sludge was dried out and crumbled away, and the same was the case for the parts of Kindly’s tentacle that had touched them. The corruption that covered him there was falling off like dried mud.

  The copper wildflowers could fight off corruption.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Curing Corruption

  Kindly’s tentacles were coiling up, startled, though it didn’t seem like the mimic was actually in pain; it was more the sort of response you got when you expected pain but none actually came, or some kind of immediate stimulus that was surprising but not actively painful.

  Ryan immediately looked down at the copper flowers. The corruption wasn’t able to invade it.

  “Why would …” he muttered, thinking about Gaia. He had found the first fragment of her core in a dungeon. The monsters in there were made of stone; they were Golems. And probably due to Gaia’s nature, she took the wild plants that were growing in the area and made them a central part of the dungeon as well, so that part made sense.

  But why would the seeds dropped by those Golem monsters grow into flowers that could fight off corruption? Unless …

  “Gaia’s dungeon was supposed to be corrupted,” Ryan whispered, tapping his foot on the ground as he walked through it all. “They didn’t just try to make a dungeon using a spirit core, but they were trying to make a corrupted dungeon … One like that would draw a ton of attention and maybe make people investigate it more. But Gaia was stronger. She managed to push back against the corruption, and now …”

  Ryan approached the copper flowers, a grin slowly but surely forming on his face. He picked the flower crown up from the ground, looking it over. It seemed to be perfectly fine, though maybe a little more rusted.

  “Kindly, I’ll be back soon, okay?” he said, smiling broadly as he rushed back out the door. Ryan almost stumbled down the stairs while pulling out his phone. Once he was at the bottom of the steps, Penny came up to Ryan again, sitting down on his shoulder as before.

  He quickly typed in his uncle’s phone number and called it. With those special plates that Runar had made for the trio’s phones, they could luckily call people from down here.

  “Come on, man; I know you don’t know how to use your phone, but—”

  Runar finally picked up, whispering on the other side of the call, “Is everything okay? Do you need my—”

  “We can cure corruption!”

  “What?”

  “We can. Cure. Corruption. The copper flowers fight off corruption. I gave Kindly that metal flower crown, and part of his tentacle was healed,” Ryan explained immediately, rushing through the village to get back to the entrance. In the process, he walked past a woman in a hazmat suit hauling around feed for the animals.

  “Sorry, what do you mean?” Runar’s voice became a bit clearer, but he seemed to have moved to a different place where he didn’t have to worry about Ryan’s mother overhearing.

  “Oh, gods—it’s not that complicated. The flowers from Gaia’s dungeon fight off corruption. We need to put this into some kind of cure or potion or whatever, so—”

  “Find Rose, right now. She has been making medicine for the animals for a while now, so she knows how to extract magical qualities from plants,” Runar explained, and Ryan immediately dug his feet into the ground, changing the direction he was running. Instead of to the cave’s entrance, he was trying to make his way to the animal pens, where Rose should be around this time.

  “Got it! I’ll let you know if she can do it,” Ryan replied.

  “Do that. I can’t just disappear as well with your mom here, so just—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Talk to you later.” Ryan hung up so that he could focus on making his way through the village while not hurting anyone. Penny was holding on tightly to his hair so that she wouldn’t be thrown off.

  The animal pens came into view, and Ryan could also see the bright yellow hazmat suit moving around between them, carrying some large bags of animal feed.

  “Oh, Ryan!” Rose exclaimed. “Perfect timing, could you help me out?”

  Ryan immediately walked up to her and took the bag of feed out of her hands, instead giving her the metal flower crown. “I’ll take over your work, but while I’m doing that, take the magical qualities out of those flowers. They can cure corruption.”

  Rose stood there silently for a few moments. Ryan was prepared to explain it all again, but that wasn’t necessary this time.

  “Got it. Do you know the schedule?”

  “Uh, yeah, basically. It’s hanging in the shed, right?” he replied, and Rose nodded.

  “Yes. I’ll let you know when it’s done, it shouldn’t take too long. I hope,” Rose responded, turning around without hesitation to get to work. And so, meanwhile, Ryan got started feeding the animals. He needed some protective gear for most of them, like the sunglasses for the cockatrices, but that was fine. He still got around to most of the animal pens pretty fast, and had Penny wait outside when it was too dangerous for her to join him.

  It took Ryan about an hour to finish up the work that Rose hadn’t gotten to yet. The people in the village were in the middle of their Regir-day celebrations, playing music that Ryan hadn’t heard before, eating food that actually smelled quite heavenly from over there, and just having a good time. But Ryan couldn’t join them; he had to hurry up. If the flowers could cure corruption, then that wouldn’t just be useful for Kindly. There were a few more individuals or animals there that were affected by some form of corruption. Kindly’s was unique in that it jumped over to any sort of mana that it could latch on to, but there were those that had similar cases of corruption to what Ryan had experienced before bonding with Tiar.

  For example, people that were brought to the symbiote nest, but couldn’t bond with one—which would have been the simplest way to get rid of it. Otherwise, their corrupted flesh would need to be cut out, something that many people not only down there but spread all across New Riverside were waiting for and going through right now.

  When he brought everything back to the shed, Ryan quickly made his way to where Rose was creating the “cure” using the flowers. He pushed open the door and stepped through toward the second room. But as he was about to push down the handle, he noticed a certain scent. It was almost sickly sweet, and just a single moment made Ryan’s heart race. Pushing the door open, the smell only became stronger. The hazmat suit lay on the ground, and on the other side of the room stood Rose. He had been working with her for a while now, but Ryan hadn’t even seen her face or heard her voice without the muffling of the suit before.

  Her skin was a light pink, and a thin tail came out from the bottom of her back, peeking out through her trousers. Right above the base of the tail were two small wings that were definitely too weak to carry her. Hearing the door open, Rose turned around, and the two small curled-up horns at the top of her head peeked out of her hair. Ryan recognized what Rose was. He wasn’t sure why he had never put it together before; he just thought that Rose had some kind of curse or corruption on herself that she didn’t want others to be affected by. But no, Rose was a succubus.

  “What are you doing in here? Get out, right now!” Rose yelled out, though she wasn’t angry by any means. She was scared, seeing him stand there, in range of her succubus scent, the reason why succubi were a protected species in the first place.

  They were similar to vampires in the way that they absorbed others’ mana to survive. But while a vampire did so by digesting the mana in a person’s blood, a succubus did so by simply absorbing the mana that someone was giving off through skin contact. To make either of these things happen, both vampires and succubi were incredibly beautiful, making up for their lower physical strength. Succubi evolved in a way that they started giving off a magical scent that was a strong aphrodisiac, luring people into sexual acts so that they could have the skin contact that was needed for them to feed.

  But since that was an ability that couldn’t be just toggled off at will, that caused problems. Anyone that wasn’t a succubus themself would be affected by this scent, though it luckily didn’t affect animals the same way that it did most other species of people. To protect succubi from sexual exploitation, which was sadly already the case, where many succubi were forced into sex work against their will, the Aglecard family was working on a way to suppress this special scent. But since that wasn’t already a thing, Rose had opted for a more extreme option: wearing a hazmat suit whenever she was around people that could be affected.

  Ryan immediately pulled his shirt over his face. He had only gotten a few moments of it, so it shouldn’t be too bad yet. “Sorry, I didn’t know. Do you have any masks or something?”

  Rose glanced over to the wall, where she had what were basically small gas masks, though they were probably meant for when she was making medicine in there. Ryan went over to them and put one of them on, already feeling himself calm down a bit. Tiar seemed to be in overdrive as well, trying to force out all the “bad stuff” that was entering the body that the two shared.

  “… Are you … are you okay?” Rose asked hesitantly, and Ryan slowly nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m alright, just a little … warm,” he explained. “Tiar is helping me out a little, I think.”

  Letting out a sigh of relief, Rose nodded. “Alright, great … Still, don’t … don’t just come rushing in here, okay?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t really think; I was just in a hurry and wanted to see how things were going,” Ryan explained, glancing over at his shoulder where Penny was still seated. Pixies were amongst the species of people that weren’t affected by the scent of the succubi due to their unique relationship with mana and magic in general, so that was also rather calming.

  Rose smiled lightly and looked over at the table where she had been working. On it was a small mound of rust and a bottle with copper-colored liquid inside of it. The copper flowers were completely rusted through, so it seemed like Rose had managed to pull everything she needed out of it.

  “Is it done already? Can I take this?”

  Rose quickly nodded. “Yes! I don’t know how much you really need, but this is basically the most concentrated version that I could extract from the flowers. Maybe water it down a bit first?”