AUG 12 Wednesday.

I feel my side hit the floor again as Stone flips me with a well-placed and strong strike, I don't stop and roll over before standing back up and readying my weapons.

He swings to my left and I use the flat side of my greatsword to block the blow, then I try to strike from below with my dagger, but he moves out of the way in time. I try to close the distance and keep him on the defensive. I swing my greatsword and keep following the large strikes with quick dagger slashes.

But my blows are either countered or parried until he pushes past my defenses, and after a few more small exchanges I'm on the ground with a wooden short sword at my throat. It's moved away after a moment and I'm able to stand back up. "Not bad Colt, you got me on the defensive for a bit there."

I nod and dust myself off. "But those blows were too wild and needed to be better coordinated to break my guard. But your style is improving, although it's far from being a proper combat style. Now get going, I have another pony to train." He says as I finish cleaning myself off.

I give him a slight smile. "Thanks, Stone, have a good day, and make them eat dirt." I put my weapons away on a rack and make my way to the door.

He laughs a little. "Will do Colt."

I walk out of the building and walk out into the busy city streets. It's only two weeks until the Grand Galloping Gala and as always the city gets a little more busy as a result. Speaking of the gala I've gotten myself a new suit to wear along with something fun.

I bought a pocket watch, it's a completely useless thing for me to have but it looks nice. And it's not like I have a shortage of bits, hell at this point I can probably live off of the interest alone, and that's not including the bits still coming in from my inventions.

Honestly, I live well below my means, but I'm just fine with that. I have a nice home that I like and a good friend as a neighbor, I might want to move somewhere with more space though. Mostly because of my plants but, now that I'm thinking about it I wouldn't really need to move, would I?

Entropy can move me anywhere within her range basically instantly, I could set up a garden somewhere private and just pop over when I need to. I keep thinking about that as I arrive at home and take a nice warm shower. I mean all I really need is anywhere isolated enough to be private.

But that could get risky, if I just set up a garden in the woods ponies would probably notice it, but there is somewhere I could go and not be bothered, Everfree Forest. The forest is known for being dangerous and filled with evil but honestly, it's mostly wild animals and the Timber Wolves.

Timber Wolves are actually something that interests me in several ways, they are seemingly some form of carnivorous plant life that is definitely magical to some degree. I've tried to look into them but very little is known about them, and that only makes me more curious.

I really want to know what makes them tick, but I'm not stupid enough to run into the Everfree without any preparation. It's a secluded forest filled with many magical plants and dangerous animals, safety is a serious concern. Still, it's a tempting idea, I find one of my notebooks and start brainstorming.

I'd need a lot to even attempt to go into the Everfree, but as a start let's see what I could do for protection. A personal shield is easy to make but has several downsides. I could just make myself invisible? I don't know any invisibility spells but I could learn one, or make one.

I added that to a new list of things I'd need if I decided to do this. The next thing I'd need is a way to protect an area to build a garden in, making a shield like that could be an interesting project. I've made smaller shields but something like this would take some of the larger gems I have.

I do have a medium cubed diamond, and if I use some other medium gems as support I could boost it even further. I started getting a little caught up in this new idea. I'd also need something to hide the area from anyone seeing it if they fly overhead, so the shield would also need some form of camouflage or illusion.

Beyond that, I'd also need building materials to make some place to store supplies there. This is starting to seem like a more long-term project, but it also doesn't seem impossible. While building a camp in the Everfree is definitely risky the research opportunities and plants I could find might be worth it.

After a while I write down a rough list of things I think I'd need to make to even attempt to do this. Once I'm done I put my book down and start going about my routine. I sit down on the floor and start to concentrate on my life magic, slowly I form it into a complex array of different intertwining magical flows over my skin.

I've been learning to copy the Companion Vine for a while now and I'm finally able to break even, I can now hold it for an indefinite amount of time, as long as you don't count any other reason I'd need to stop. And in even better news, I still haven't reached a limit.

I've studied the Companion Vine's magical flows more than any other plant I own, but even now I'm only copying the larger flows and a few smaller ones. If I keep learning how the life magic flows I could actually be able to increase my magical regeneration.

And considering how often I've been running out of my magic it would be massively useful to speed it up even by the smallest amount. On that same note, I've had some slight success in breeding the Blood Leaf Tea, It's not a large increase but still a noticeable one.

The part that is by far the slowest is how long it takes to test the effects of each new generation, but as I always say, progress is progress. I focus my will and try to copy one of the larger magical flows in more detail. I've separated the magical flows of the Companion Vine into two layers.

Large flows are made from smaller flows and I think it might go even smaller, but I haven't reached that point yet. My learning process is to start at the root of the Companion Vine where all the magical flows start, then I pick a single magical flow and start following it while copying the smaller more intricate flows.

When I reach the end of that large flow I return to the bottom and start on the next large flow, I do this while memorizing all the small flows that form the larger flows. It's a very tedious process, even more than relearning spells. But it is showing great promise, and if I can even speed up my magic regeneration a little it will all be worth it.

After an hour I stop and move on to the next form of training. I stand up and stretch out my sore limbs, I make some fresh tea and head into my workroom. I enter my workroom and walk past a small vine on one of the shelves, I spend a moment checking on it. I've been trying to crossbreed a better vine recently, and after many MANY failed attempts I had successes yesterday.

The new vine saw a small but noticeable increase in its growth rate but also saw its gripping strength weaken. That's fine though, now that I have the vine I can focus on breeding it into the perfect little monster. And with a new vine comes a new name, I never really liked Spine Leaf Vine, too bland and long.

I've decided to name this new vine, Razor Vine, I know it's not that much better but at least it's shorter. The Razor Vine has a deep green color with small heart-shaped leaves, and so SO many needles. Speaking of the needles I've realized something interesting that I didn't notice until recently.

When I first started breeding the Spine Leave plant I just strengthened its needles, and while I often broke them off to test their strength I never kept the plant around for long afterward. As a result, I never realized that the Spine Leave's speedy growth is even exaggerated in its needles.

I left a Spine Leaf plant in my kitchen to use as seasoning when I wanted it, but I started to notice the needles growing back at a very fast rate, even faster than the plant's normal growth rate. So after I noticed this I tested my crossbred vines for the same effect, and both the Spine Leaf Vine and the Razor Vine have the same effect.

And this adds to a different effect I noticed in the new Razor Vine. As the Razor Vine lost some of the needle's strength while being crossbred, the Razor Vine's needles are prone to breaking off when they stick inside something. As a result, the Razor Vine is a lot more painful than I originally intended it to be, at this point it's some demented mix of a cactus and barbed wire.

But hey that is a plus for me. Because of this unintended effect, I decided to not strengthen the needles and keep this splintering effect. All of this has resulted in one hell of a plant, pun intended. It can cover a pony in seconds, the needles will grow into their skin and if they move the needles will break off and imbed themselves while the plant keeps growing.

Honestly, using this plant on a pony might be some form of torture, but I only made this as a last resort. This plant will either provide me a chance to escape or incapacitate whatever is threatening me. And it's not like the Razor Vine can do anything in another pony's hooves.

They'd need life magic to use it properly, and as a regular plant, it's just a fast-growing needle-covered vine. Ok, that doesn't really prove how safe it is, but I'm sure as hell not giving it to anypony anytime soon. I stopped my second mental rant of the day and actually started working on what I wanted to.

I want to work on my new prank for a certain princess. She decided glitter is a good idea, and that crime can't go unanswered. So it's time to plan my revenge and this time I want to get creative. And my idea is very simple, a puzzle.

Why torment somepony when you can get them to torment themselves? I want to make a puzzle that can't be solved, make a bunch of clues as red herrings, and the best part? There is nothing inside the puzzle, it was just a massive waste of time.

For most, this might not be that bad, but Celestia is like me when it comes to how curious she is, she will get curious and want to solve my puzzle properly. And while she's messing around with a fake puzzle I can prepare even more pranks for when she finally finds out the puzzles were a distraction.

Now then, what's the vaguest and hardest-to-solve type of puzzle? Riddles can have horrible wording and can run off of stupid nonsensical logic when needed. And I spent a few hours finding the worst riddles the library had to offer, it's time to get to work.

Author's Note

Thank for reading. :]

This chapter is mostly showing some of Shade's progress in a few things. Basically filler.