The most important trick to being a reasonably proficient mage was to never trust the system for everything. Knowledge, practice, and experimentation, were the cornerstones of magic. During chronomancy training, Leel had sketched out several ideas for an improved chronal summoning circle, which he now put into play on Gaia. It had several little neat tricks that Leel was quite proud of.

　　The first was a sort of sorting feature that took several parameters Leel fed into it and searched for a proper match among the available echoes in local time. Not that the standard spell didn`t do some of that. It did. But where a normal mage would ask for something like "a food plant" or even "fruit", Leel was asking for dozens of things. Something that could survive in the harshest of conditions. Something that was nutritionally complete and required little preparation.

　　But most importantly, he needed something that was dense in mana. Leel was hungry, yes, but he`d much rather eat a real meal in his home than some random historic plant on Gaia. He would gladly sacrifice all the other elements of the plant for the ability to draw an above-average amount of mana in. Environmental mana was one source wizards drew on for their mana reservoirs, but a mana-dense enough plant could, well, supplant that need by enhancing his internal reservoir.

　　It would be a small enhancement in any case, but over several hours a suitable enough plant would give him enough regeneration to perhaps fill his tank once. And that would be more than enough to deal with Matt, should he get serious.

　　Of course, Leel could have asked for so much more with his summoning. But the phrasing was tedious, and he wasn`t looking to impress any judges.

　　The spell circle lit up. That was another little flourish on Leel`s part. Leel had provided enough parameters that he`d be surprised if the circle was able to meet them all perfectly. For essentially no cost, he had programmed a sort of visible feedback based on how well each parameter was met. In a determined order, it would blink colors, each color indicating how well various aspects of the search had succeeded.

　　Red would be the worst, moving up the color spectrum to yellow for medium results, and blue was the best. So far, no color was showing, but that was expected. Soon it would, and he`d know how good of a plant he had pulled.

　　Normally, Leel had other considerations when performing at magical-prodigy levels. The rules of magic could be stretched, sometimes quite far. But normally a mage would have to stop just short of the astonishing in fear of the system. It tolerated a certain amount of mussing with skills, but there were certain lines one typically did not cross over.

　　Leel was much less concerned about that restriction here on Gaia. This was a system instance, to be sure. But it wasn`t his system instance. Rather, it was as if he was working on contract. If he could kill Matt, he`d go home with the promised rewards. If he couldn`t, he`d die. Or worse, he`d be trapped here. Those were his main concerns. This particular system instance was oddly impotent, and seemed to lack the resources to stop Leel or even Leel`s opponent.

　　So Leel got fancy. Normally, one would trade mass-for-mass in a summoning of this kind. Leel had instead drawn the circle to do something that the system instance of his home would not tolerate. It would consume the mass of several vegetables to make a smaller but higher-quality plant, essentially using the sacrificial matter as fuel to enhance the circle. The system would allow a great many things, but matter-to-mana conversion was for whatever reason one of its great taboos. Leel had always, always wanted to try it, and here he could.

　　Ding!

　　Quest Discovered: LISTEN YOU IDIOT

　　You have no idea what you are doing here. No idea about the very grave consequences you are playing with as if they are TOYS you DUMB IDIOT how did I get TWO of you stupid, idiotic, horrifying pieces of&

　　My, Leel thought. This has certainly touched a nerve.

　　But he wasn`t worried. Not a bit. Regardless of how mad this system instance got, he seriously doubted that word of his actions would follow him home. Even if it did, he doubted his system instance would care. For all their failings, the instances were remarkably focused on their own territories. Nobody truly knew an instance, but he very much doubted that it would care about what Leel got up to in the boonies. That was purely this instance`s problem, and this instance couldn`t stop him.

　　Suddenly, the circle burst with color. It was blue. Honestly, that alone was enough to make the entire experiment a success by itself. The first blink in the cycle was caloric content produced per soil nutrient consumed, or something close. Essentially, it represented the efficiency of the plant, and this echo`s efficiency was perfect.

　　Leel settled down eagerly to wait for the color to change. But after the planned five-second interval, the color did not change, nor did it at the tenth. Suddenly, some of Leel`s pride fell away. Somehow, he had managed to botch the visual feedback. It should read one part of the process, then shift to the next, as regular as clockwork. He didn`t know how, but he was nearly certain he had messed up the programming for that function.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

　　After the circle shined blue for a bit too long, he became quite certain he had messed it up. At least one blue was confirmed. The design of the circle wouldn`t allow a false positive unless the whole circle was botched. But it was highly unlikely that the spell had identified a plant that was nearly perfect in every way, which was what the pure blue meant. Living things just weren`t allowed to be that perfect. Absent the possibility of some kind of god-tier carrot, Leel had to accept that he wasn`t quite as perfect as he thought.

　　Beyond the colors, there wasn`t much else to observe. Leel sat down to wait for the plant to come into being. It was only due to the improvements he had made to his circles that he could do this spell at all. His final contribution to the circle was a mana gathering portion that would draw in ambient power for hours to gradually reconstruct the echo. Still, it would be a close thing. His circle should survive the kind of strain for however many hours this process took, but only just.

　　—

　　Hours passed as Leel dozed in the odd Gaian twilight. Finally, he was woken up by a sudden crack as the circle broke. He sprang to his feet and rushed to the site of the spell, oddly nervous. One way or another, his bet was already cast. If this spell didn`t summon something particularly good or had failed entirely, he would be out of options to ever get the necessary magic fuel to complete his mission.

　　He let out a sigh of relief as he reached the center of the circle and saw a small patch of green. Kneeling down, he found the color came from the smallest of possible sprouts, just a hair-thin green stalk with a single leaf midway down its fraction of an inch of length.

　　It`s not much. No, scratch that. It`s worse. It`s not enough.

　　Size wasn`t all-important here, but a plant this small would take serious time to grow. Leel had meant for the spell to produce a smaller amount of vegetable matter than the plants that he had fed into it, but not to this extent. This was tiny, and it simply wouldn`t be enough to make a meal of, no matter how magic-dense it was.

　　Leel despaired. He was well and truly out of ideas. Barring some miracle, he`d die on this rock, alone. Even worse, he`d die humiliated. It was just a matter of time.

　　Then, all at once, Leel felt a pull on his MP pool. The stalk sprouted another leaf. Then another.

　　Oh, my. That`s very interesting.

　　For a plant to have enough of a pull to take even a point of mana from his mana pool, it had to be a very specialized plant indeed. On Leel`s world, they had plants that could do something similar. Though, the plants that could vampire mana at an alarming rate to sustain themselves were usually bred and planted on ritual-burned ground. Now that he thought about it, Gaia wasn`t really that dissimilar to ritual-burned ground.

　　As happy as he was to see the plant doing well, it wouldn`t do to feed it his mana. Leel withdrew for the evening to leave it to its own devices. With any luck, it would be large enough to work with after a good, long sleep.

　　—

　　The next "morning", Leel woke up, rubbed his eyes, and stood to look in the direction of the plant. What he saw astonished him, and it was only after he had taken several strides that he started sprinting towards the plant in glee.

　　The plant had exceeded Leel`s wildest dreams. It was the size of a barrel, all thin tendrils like the sprout he had initially seen tangled together into something like a bush. He could get multiple meals out of this, not just one. It was plenty for multiple attempts on Matt`s life. With this, he could bombard Matt`s estate with the power of an artillery, destroying everything he had built, then recharge for another go. He wouldn`t need to, of course. But he could.

　　He had achieved success above his wildest dreams. He could feel the mana burning off the thing. It wasn`t much, but in this wasteland it stood out like a fire. He reached out for it, impatient to get his first taste.

　　Ding!

　　Quest discovered: Don`t touch it, you idiot! Don`t&

　　Leel had no time for this. He reached out to grab a big handful of the plant, only to suddenly think twice about it. The system did have a point. It didn`t hurt to be cautious. Instead of a mouthful, he pinched off a single leaf, smelled it, then cautiously put it in his mouth. It tasted fine. After a quick chew, he swallowed. He then brought up his status screen to see if there were any subtler negative effects from his bite of food, and gasped.

　　His mana regeneration had jumped to over one MP per second. He already had several mana. He immediately, without waiting, cleaned his body and clothes with a cleansing spell. It was wonderful. For the first time in days, he felt himself. What would a mouthful of this plant do? Without waiting any longer, he reached out, grabbed a big handful of plant, and pulled.

　　It didn`t break. He pulled again, and it held strong.

　　What in the world?

　　Suddenly, Leel`s mana bottomed out. The plant was a hungry little thing. Oh, well. He`d pull another leaf, let it refill his mana, and come back with arcane sheers or something. There was only one problem, which made itself immediately apparent as he tried to pull away. His hand was stuck.

　　Somehow, the plant had managed to tangle itself around his hand, and he was unable to dislodge it. Leel pulled, and pulled. It was no good. He was stuck.

　　Then it was the plant`s turn to pull. Leel felt a pain in his abdomen like he had been punched in the gut, almost doubling him over. But even as the pain started, he knew it wasn`t a physical hit. The plant had pulled on his internal, natural mana.

　　That shouldn`t even be possible.

　　Leel`s trapped status took on a new urgency. He pulled desperately at the plant, tried to tear it away with his free hand, and even tried to bite it away with his teeth. The last tactic worked a little, but not enough to get free. Then he felt another hit to his mana. Then another.

　　By the time it occurred to Leel that he should be screaming for help, he was too weak to actually do it.