"Then… what are we doing so far from the city, in some forgotten corner of the Wastelands?" Misty asked Dorio.
They were on a small plateau rising like a lookout over the surrounding area. They had even brought several telescopes.
Faelan, Dorio, Misty, Viktor, and Galina had gathered to bring everyone to this spot—only for Galina and Faelan to then wander off, leaving the rest behind.
As for Kiwi and Sasha, they were "busy," thanks to Cynta's actions.
After Misty's talent was revealed, her first reaction was to think someone was messing with her.
Then, after seeing the basement of the clinic (the place Kiwi and Faelan called home), she convinced herself it had to be some kind of cutting-edge biotech or an incredibly good imitation—but nothing real.
Mystical bullshit? She didn't believe it for a second.
Even if, secretly, she wished it were true, she simply couldn't.
"Strictly speaking? Your denial only gave the boss more reasons to prove that what he says and does is, in fact, mystical bullshit." Dorio was chewing on a persimmon. They had brought along an entire basket of fruit as snacks and to keep hydrated. "Between us? I think you just gave him the perfect chance to show off a little. He rarely has that smug grin on his face. Look at Viktor—he hasn't stopped trembling since he realized, huh, handyman?"
"I am not trembling!" Viktor protested loudly from his lounge chair under the parasol, holding a glass of chilled wine. "I just thought I'd get comfortable for the show."
Definitely not because his legs felt like jelly at the thought of what the horned guy was about to do to leave an impression on Misty. No, he just wanted to enjoy the sun, the dust, and the landscape full of… more dust.
Though the wine helped. A lot of wine.
"That still doesn't answer my question…" Misty bit carefully into a peeled papaya. "At least the food's good. Nothing like the vending-machine burritos or those noodles made of… stuff."
In Night City, people ate plenty of things purely out of the will to live. It was an unspoken understanding not to read the ingredient label on your food.
Made it easier to imagine it was something else.
"By the way, why did we have to wait a few days?" Viktor asked Dorio, who was the most informed of the three.
"Paperwork." Dorio shrugged, biting into her persimmon again. She was trying it today and it had already climbed to her list of favorite fruits. "This time the boss didn't buy land, he just asked for permission from city hall to 'test a new product' and re-green a zone."
"Whistle Damn, must've cost him a kidney."
"Not a single eurodollar."
"Don't mess with me, testing any kind of substance has been strictly regulated for years, ever since that blue-heart disease. To get approval—"
He didn't need to finish. The need for a bribe was obvious.
"I'm serious." Dorio swallowed and licked her lips. "The deal is that once 'the company test' is done, city hall gets to keep whatever he leaves behind. Basically, they only let him do it because they'll get free samples. Excusing it as free land cleanup."
Clearly, the prospect of free samples from such a "test" was enough to make a lot of people impatient to see it carried out and finished. Finally, they'd be able to study plant technology without restrictions in their labs.
"Eh, okay, I can see why they'd allow that."
Their thoughts were definitely straying toward trying to crack the formula of X-27. Poor fools—their efforts were doomed.
As they chatted and Misty silently digested the information, Galina drove back up alone and hurried toward them.
"All right, everyone on the telescopes." She clapped her hands and gave instructions as she set up one of her own, pointing it in the same direction as the others.
"Did he tell you what he was going to do?" Viktor asked, reluctantly standing and moving toward a telescope. "It's weird he left us this far out."
"He said he wanted to try some music, whatever that means," Galina replied while adjusting the lens. "Okay, looks like he's about to start."
Everyone peered intently through their telescopes.
…
Ever since Faelan realized the limits of his SAV-given druidic powers were blurry, he had been imagining different abilities. Today, he was either going to leave everyone speechless in spectacular fashion—or humiliate himself with an audience.
Seeing Misty's disbelief, he decided to take things seriously.
His goal: to attempt the Oak Requiem, a skill of a "colleague" named Horupitia Aholting, also known as the Mad Dog of the Slaughter Witch—referring to Lolikiano Mistrim.
"All right, let's start with this…"
Faelan wasn't sure if the ability would destroy all his clothes, so he had spare clothes and glasses waiting in Galina's car. Supposedly it shouldn't, but better to be cautious. The last thing he wanted was to end up naked here, like some god descending on dead land to bring life.
Especially with satellites capable of capturing everything from multiple angles in 4K definition.
Oh, he was counting on being spied on by corps from space the moment he reported this test.
And if they asked? He could always say it was a deepfake hack uploaded to their satellites. Or maybe just shrug it off with "It's magic." What could they argue back?
Since he stopped hiding his antlers, Faelan felt less restrained and more confident, but he made sure not to let it turn him wild.
As long as he didn't have to face types like Saburo Arasaka—men with too many resources and personnel—there wasn't much to fear. He even considered traveling the world to spread out a few "extra lives." Depending solely on Night City's population for his survival felt limiting, even if no enemy knew about it.
And one thing he knew for sure: scum existed everywhere, not just in Night City.
Faelan pressed his feet firmly into the dry soil until they disappeared and raised his hands to the sky, unleashing all his combined abilities without restraint, generating a visible green aura.
For all that I have seen,
flocks of black birds from the depths of the unknown.
They will come to this land and endure,
they will fight the citizens of Erin,
and cause a war that will break us.
But one of us will rise,
and with him, all of us,
to shoot the bird and break its wings.
Daja Morr, father of the mightiest gods,
grant this servant the grace to become the tree of life.
Nothing happened.
...
"Maybe if I adjust the angle of my arms…"
BOOM!
Faelan's skin began to crack like ceramic as sprouts and shoots burst out of his body, wrapping around him and growing at a speed visible to the naked eye into a towering oak that kept expanding in height and thickness.
In just a few seconds, he had grown the equivalent of five hundred years.
As he grew, he noticed something interesting.
The soil wasn't as poor as it looked. If you removed the top three hundred meters, the earth beneath was actually fertile—likely thanks to groundwater and decades of disuse.
Though large-scale excavation like that would cost a fortune, so no one did it. It was easier to synthesize nutrient-rich soil and build greenhouses.
"Maybe that's why the Wastelands haven't been developed," he thought.
Still, he didn't let himself get distracted. He focused and separated a tiny portion of vitality to condense a fruit the size of a walnut. If Misty wanted to become his student, she'd need a trigger to unlock her powers, and this would suffice.
He even added spirals on its surface—for absolutely no reason in particular.
Of course, he could just press his hand to her back and flip the switch…
But wasn't it far more spectacular, solemn, and luxurious to become a massive tree and create a "sacred fruit" to awaken her gifts?
He could even stage a fake ceremony for her acceptance. It would be fun to mess with Misty a little.
And if he found more people like her?
All the more fun for him.
Same result—but the difference in presentation gave it a completely different perceived value, and that was what he wanted.
"Wow, there's a lot of groundwater here," he noted as the roots spread. "Well, going a bit further should be fine, right?"
…
"He's definitely showing off," Galina laughed as she watched the tree grow, recording everything. Her daughter and Kiwi would absolutely want to see the replay.
The others swallowed hard, staring in silence.
The tree kept growing and thickening. Only when it reached a certain point did it seem to slow down—but then massive roots erupted, breaking through the ground and causing underground water to gush up as the roots turned into more trees. The process repeated several times.
Within minutes, a completely barren zone had become a colossal swamp. For a moment, they worried, as the vegetation's spread stopped dangerously close to them. They almost believed it would overtake them too.
Misty fell backward onto her butt, staring wide-eyed at the small-scale terraforming she had just witnessed.
Yes, there was no other word for it but terraforming.
Only after the tremors ceased and the vegetation stopped shaking could they take in the full transformation of the landscape.
Misty turned to Viktor, then to Dorio, then finally to Galina.
"I'm not dreaming, am I?"
"Better question: are you even capable of dreaming up something like this?" Galina thumbed toward the new swamp.
"…Good point." Misty hugged her knees, resting her chin on them. "How is he not locked up in a lab on some dissection table already?"
"After seeing that, would you try to catch him?" Viktor asked. "Do you think you could?"
"…Good point. Again." Misty slapped her cheeks with both hands. "All right, if this isn't a dream, I'm in for… whatever this is."
Dorio turned to Galina.
"By any chance, did he tell you when he's coming back—or how?"
Watching Faelan turn into the embodiment of an actual swamp made it hard to imagine how he'd return to normal.
"He's got a change of clothes in the car, so—"
Crack!
A thick nearby root split open and Faelan stepped out, looking slightly dazed. He had gotten carried away again and needed a moment to refocus.
"Speak of the devil—there he is, it's… him…" Galina's words slowed and her voice shrank as her brain processed what she was seeing. By the time she couldn't articulate any more words, all she could do was swallow unconsciously.
Dorio quickly followed suit.
Viktor snapped his gaze away the moment he felt that creeping sense of reverence, as if nature's avatar had manifested before them—a god walking the earth—and just breathing the same air was a blessing for all life.
But of everyone present, Misty's mind took the hardest hit.
She felt she was witnessing the purest, most perfect form of life—the embodiment of nature itself. Nothing else could claim to be more beautiful or pure while he existed.
Viktor rushed to Galina's car, grabbed the spare glasses and clothes, and returned to hand Faelan the glasses without daring to look at him.
"Oh, thanks." A little less dazed now, Faelan understood the situation and quickly put on the glasses, breaking his SCP-166-like charm.
While the others were still dazed and shaking their heads to clear their thoughts, he quickly dressed.
Then he turned to see his handiwork—one the corpos would dismantle the moment he left.
"Why does this look so much like Avatar's Foggy Swamp?" he thought, confused and surprised by the resemblance. "The central tree even looks like the banyan-grove tree Huu talks about."
Of course, he meant ATLA's famous saga, not that trash movie with blue aliens who stick their tentacle-braids into everything that moves like a bunch of perverts.
The STDs on that planet must be horrifying—you'd never know where those tentacles had been all day…
"Well." He turned back to Misty. "Last chance. Do you want—?"
"YES! Ahem I mean, yes, please." Misty quickly corrected herself after realizing she'd sounded a little too eager. "I'd like to become your… apprentice? Follower?"
"Apprentice will do. Though how far you go depends on your effort and understanding." He showed her the fruit he had prepared at the start of his tree transformation—before he went and made a swamp. "This fruit was just created by me. It'll unlock your latent abilities. To anyone else, it's just a curious-looking fruit. When we get back, I'll explain the ritual you need to perform before consuming it fully."
Misty's eyelid twitched at the sight of the fruit.
It had started walnut-sized, but thanks to his distraction, it had swollen to the size of a massive watermelon.
"Does it really need a ritual?"
No, he just wanted to mess with her!
"What do you think I just did?" Faelan gestured at the lush swamp behind him. "Did you see me snap my fingers and make this appear out of thin air?"
Misty thought about it and nodded. It made sense.
Faelan had to hold back his laughter. That would come later.
…
"Who the hell puts on a movie while on the job—during such an important moment?!" An old man rolled up a magazine from the nearest table and smacked the operators on the head with it furiously—though doing no actual damage.
"Ow! Sir, ow! It's really not a movie!" one of the operators shielded himself with an arm and pointed with his free hand. "Look, all the cameras show the same thing!"
Each monitor displayed the images from different satellites and angles, proving what they were seeing was real.
"I see…"
The operator sighed in relief, thinking the misunderstanding cleared.
"Ow!" Another smack to the back of his head.
"What was that for?!"
"Because if our feeds have been hacked, how dare you talk back to me?!" the old man scolded. "Wait… could this be some kind of AI conspiracy?"
The operator felt like crying. No—in fact, he did cry.
Wasn't this old man supposed to retire ten years ago?!
He had been smacked with the same magazine, at the same angle, so many times that the cover was practically imprinted into his synthetic skin!
Couldn't he see they were watching real-time footage?!
"That's it. I'm going back to my parents' crypto farm," the operator decided silently.
Similar situations played out across different factions—people's minds instinctively scrambling for logical explanations to the nonsense they were witnessing.
And now that a small natural biome existed in the Wastelands… were they really going to take it all?
The answer: Naturally. If anything, they'd send more trucks and drones.