DEC 24 Thursday.

I continue to cast the muscle healing spell on myself as I rest and recover more from yesterday's painful training. Stone as always did not take it easy on me in the slightest.

When I told him about my new form of training he made a few suggestions. First, train more before doing it while practicing with him, to quote his exact words. If you can't walk you can't run, a polite way to tell me to improve a lot more before I disrupt our training with crazy ideas.

To be fair I can only slowly walk around and clumsily swing my weapons right now, so I'll take that advice and practice it on my own for now. A little disappointing but not something to worry over, for now, I'm focusing on my armor again and it's coming along well enough.

The many pieces need to be measured, carved out, and enchanted, so it's taking a while to make everything properly. So far I've only made three legs and some of the back armor, it will take me longer to work on everything else, especially the chest piece as it's the largest, and making a piece of steel wood that big takes much more time.

I down a cup of tea and feel my magic return to me with a little vigor, I need to wake up more and deal with a few things, but first breakfast. Some toast and jam with a steamed Red Root, simple but filling. I also made Entropy a bowl of some diced fruit and seeds, because if I don't feed her first she'll just beg off of my plate.

Once everything is properly cleaned up I move back to my main room and sit down with some rather nice mint tea. I drink a lot of Blood Leaf Tea so it's nice to mix things up every once in a while. I get comfortable before laying out my deck of playing cards in a neat row.

Over time I've started to get creative with my spatial training, and something I've tried recently is to build a house of cards. Even with humans' dexterous hands, many struggled to make this, and even with my field, it's not that easy. But with my spatial senses, I can detect the tiny changes when the cards start to become unstable.

So, I need to stack cards very delicately with only my space magic while also keeping the whole structure stable. It's a slow process and takes a lot of practice and patience, but I lack neither of those things. I lift three cards at once forming two into a triangle with the floor before grabbing more cards to continue.

I formed a base and I'm able to start on the second layer before I pulled a little too hard on a card while trying to stabilize it and everything fell apart like a house of cards, pun intended. So, I start again and again repeating the same process as I make a game out of my training.

After an hour I stop and move on to the next thing I have planned for today, going through more magic damned mail.

Somewhat N.S.F.W begins here.

I had hoped the hype would die down some with time, but then some bastard pony from the fashion industry decided they liked making bits off of metal combs and endorsed it more.

Hoity Toity, a minor character in the show and now somepony on my, go fuck yourself, list. Needless to say, I started to get more mail when that happened, and it's starting to annoy me a little. It's not actually that much mail, several dozen letters a week, but the contents of these letters are something else entirely.

It's only one out of every few dozen letters and I have no idea why I'm even being sent things like this, they don't even know if I'm a stallion! Yet they still come, and every time I open one of them my body has the reaction you'd expect, and let me tell you, walking around my apartment with my member bumping around is embarrassing even when I'm alone.

I'm also not asking Celestia for help on this either, why? Because I'm not asking my friend to help me deal with the ponies sending me what amounts to porn. I also have to at least open them because some of those letters are important things like my taxes.

So I do what I'm best at, ignoring all of this until it goes away, even if it's hard to deal with when my damned mind can't stop thinking about mares. Having Celestia pop into my head also doesn't help, especially when my hormones demand I do more than just ignore what's bouncing between my hind legs.

I'm not describing how I do that, even in my own head, I have enough on my mind as it is without that being brought up.

I shake those thoughts out and watch another letter burn while trying not to think about what I just read, I fail and just decide to drink more tea and ignore the uncomfortable way I'm now walking. After a while of sitting down and clearing my mind, I'm able to calm my body down and get back to doing something actually productive instead of being unreasonably horny.

Somewhat N.S.F.W ends here.

I breathe out and stretch my legs after sitting for so long waiting and after a moment I decide that some fresh air sounds nice right now. With that in mind, I turn to Entropy as she rests on her perch like normal, "Hey, girl." She turns to face me with a slight head tilt, "Let's go to the camp, I need something to do."

She flies over immediately. "Out, good." I smile at the odd words before we both vanish a moment later. The Void is always somewhat calming for me and helps take my mind off of several things, I really do not want to think about mares or worse my mare friends right now.

I open my eyes and look around to see my small shack and breathe out slowly. Entropy decides to fly over to a perch grown from the wall and goes right back to sleep. Normally I'd like to have her with me while I'm here, but I've relaxed those rules a little because I haven't seen the snake in a while, and because Celestia knows about this place.

I walk outside and notice that the snow has already lessened slightly from the last time I was here two days ago. The weather here really does seem to be somewhat separate from the rest of Equestria, although I'm not sure if that's because this is normal and ponies mess with that timetable or some other odd magical reason.

Before checking on everything I walk over to check the standing board right next to the shack. I took two White Oak seeds and grew them into several-foot-tall posts before making a flat board in between them and putting a small roof over that. I take off a small note that's posted on the board and read it.

Shade, the odd seed sprouted when I arrived and was already an inch tall.

Ps, I'll be sending a letter with our next meeting time soon, have a good new year.

Celestia. December twenty second

I smile at the note and my mind moves to certain thoughts before I realize what seed she's talking about and wrench my thoughts to that. I snap my head to the center of Gaia's Eden and see a small tree that looks utterly out of place, I can't get a good look from here so I sprint right over to it with excitement.

When I got closer I immediately noticed a few things. The life magic within several feet of the is a little denser than it normally is, the difference isn't big but the fact that it's being changed by a single plant is not normal. The other main thing is that the tree is around five feet tall.

I checked the note again to confirm, Celestia's note is only two days old but it mentions a tiny sprout, not a small tree. Did it grow this much already? I normally kept the seed inside the hole in the stump along with a few inches, I made it like this so it could grow a little inside the trunk and then be transplanted.

I look at the thin and odd-looking small tree. Its bark is filled with large eight-inch thick veins of golden-looking material, which I know isn't actually gold, just something that looks the same. I honestly have no idea what it is, but now I might be able to extract enough of it to experiment with and find out.

Beyond that, the bark is the same brown as normal. Next, I inspect the leaves, they have by far the largest difference from what the normal tree is like. The leaves are completely gold, the same gold as the lines in the trunk seem to make up all of the leaves now as they gleam and shine in the sunlight.

I look around the ground for a moment but don't see any leaves on the ground, I am beyond curious now, so I reach out with my field and pick a leaf. It detaches fine but as soon as the leaf leaves the tree I watch as it disintegrates into golden dust before breaking down into nothing at all, not even dust falls to the ground.

"What ... are you?" I can't help but ask out loud. Before I do anything else I try to reach out with my life magic to feel the tree, but get nothing back. I try to focus my mind to find anything, but still, there's nothing there, just a wall that my senses can't pass.

It seems the tree's ability to block life magic has taken a massive step up. But how? What caused something like this? After a few moments of thought, I can only see one possibility. Normally a tree like this would either take a very long time to absorb the amount of life magic I dumped into the seed, or if the seed sprouts after a certain amount of time it would probably never reach the level of life magic it had.

Either way, this tree is some form of better or simply a more complete version of the normal tree that it normally can't reach, the only thing I could guess for certain is it needs a lot of life magic to reach this stage and I doubt it ever would without somepony like me. But now the question becomes, what should I do with it?

This tree can block my life magic senses, so even if I tried to change it with life magic I'd be working blind which is a bad idea in several ways, most prominently the simple fact that I could kill the tree by accident. So, the only real thing I can do is feed it more life magic and let it do what it wants.

There is some good news though. The tree roots were able to grow through the trunk it grew out of so I will be able to move the tree and plant it, but after I plant it properly it's not moving anytime soon. Another piece of good news comes from the fact that the tree doesn't give off the same amount of life magic.

It does increase the amount of life magic around it but the massive amount of life magic that's probably inside it can't be sensed, so unlike the seed it came from it probably won't attract powerful beings anymore. So I could just plant this tree wherever I like safely, and I will be planting this tree because it's beyond amazing in so many ways.

Just its ability to slightly increase the ambient life magic around itself is worth every second I spent feeding it life magic, and who knows what else I can learn from this magical tree? I decide to take a small cutting of a branch just to make sure I don't lose my work if this tree dies somehow.

I don't have my knife so a quick trip back to my shack to retrieve the carving knife I use for steel wood and the gem that goes with it, when I return to the tree I find a very small branch and move the knife up to it before gently pressing down with the blade.

But nothing happens as the blade fails to cut it and instead just slightly bends the branch. I use more force and hold the branch still with my field, but still, nothing happens, somehow this tiny branch can't be cut in the slightest and after several tries, I move the blade back to see that even the bark is untouched.

I just stare at the increasingly odd tree with my knife. "Well, shit. What do I even do with you?" I again talk to myself trying to think this all through. I can't seem to damage it and I don't want to try other more destructive things for fear that the tree could die.

I also can't manipulate it with my life magic, so all I can do is plant it. But is that a good idea? I don't know. This is unlike anything I've seen before and I have no idea what to do with it. I could wait a while and ask Celestia? But honestly, I think she'll be just as lost as I am.

I also can't leave it as it is, the tree is a complete unknown and I have no idea if it would survive where it is for long. So I decided to pick my only half-decent option, plant the super magical tree, and hope for the best. But before I do something completely stupid it's time to at least try and take my safety seriously.

I can't do much, but I can go home and make a simple shield to surround the tree, it probably won't do shit against this thing, but it's better than nothing. I spend the next hour going home and enchanting a large ruby with the same shield I use on my apartment before heading back with it and another gem I've had sitting around for a while now.

When I return to the tree Entropy is with me and she immediately lands on a branch while inspecting the gold leaves. "Pretty." She caws as I set up the shield and place the sunstone down next to it, I filled the sunstone a long time ago but never found much of a use for it.

This tree could make use of the extra solar magic it slowly releases so why not add it in to try and help the tree live, if this thing even needs sunlight that is? I start by simply trying to think about where the tree should be planted and after some thought I decide to just keep it where it is right now, the dead center of Gaia's Eden.

So I simply decomposed the tree stump into soil so the new tree didn't have to be moved at all, it seems like the best idea to keep the tree healthy and make less work for myself, plus if the tree is here I can keep a clear line of sight on it at all times.

I keep the tree straight with my field and compact the soil so it keeps the tree standing in place before placing the large ruby a few feet away and activating it. I then place the sunstone on top of the ruby and sit down in the snowy grass while looking up at the magical tree and taking out an empty notebook.

As my thoughts drift about and ponder this tree something pops into my head. "As a madman once said, I will know you better than you have ever known yourself." I chuckle at myself and start to draw the tree.

I have a feeling this tree's many mysteries could drive me mad, but only time will tell. I look up as a strong wind blows through and a few leaves fall from the tree before scattering into golden particles and vanishing completely in the wind. I smile up at the tree, "If nothing else this is one hell of a way to end off this wild year."

I spend over two hours trying my best to document every tiny detail I can about the tree before taking a break and heading home again. I have something very important to do today and it all revolves around the little gremlin I live with, it's Entropy's birthday today.

Well, actually it was her birthday two days ago but I kind of forgot about it and had to move the date a bit to gather everything I'd need for her small celebration, and yes I know it's bad I forgot her birthday but in my defense, I barely remember my own birthday.

So to make it up to her, even if Entropy could care less that it's her birthday, I explained it to her but she just looked at me like I was stupid. Regardless of that, I bought a large Bass that I'm going to cook for her to feast on as a gift and apology, along with a few new toys I bought without her knowing.

So when we return home I start working on the fish immediately. "You do what you want, and happy birthday." I smile as she looks at the large Bass with excitement while not listening to a word I said. "You are just a glutton aren't you?" I tease her a little which earns me a peck on the hoof before she flies off to her perch.

It takes me a while to properly process the Bass because I haven't done it in a very long time, but once I have it ready I drench the thing in some oil and a little cheese before throwing it in the oven to bake. It takes a while to bake and in that time I make myself a little bowl of oatmeal and fruit.

I eat and then spend the next hour checking on the Bass and showering Entropy in scratches and pets while playing with her. When the Bass is done I let it cool before dumping it on a plate and placing it on the table next to Entropy as she practically vibrates at the sight. "Dig in girl," I say with a happy tone.

She turns back to me and then looks back at the large Bass. "All?" She caws out the question, I never knew birds could show excitement in their tone.

I chuckle. "Yes, it's all for you, happy birthday Entropy." The words barely left my mouth before she descended on the Bass like the vicious best she could be. I don't think I've ever seen a bird rip a fish's head clean off, and the scales don't seem to stop her in the slightest, those talons are sharper than they look.

I watch in grotesque silence as she devoured half of the Bass that's twice her size before she even slows down a little, when she finally stops I decide against giving her the bowl of diced fruit I made as only a quarter of the fish is left as she lays sprawled out on the table in a food coma. I can't help but laugh at the sight, "You crazy ass bird."

I pick her half-awake form up and move her over to my bedroom before laying her on my bed. "Get some sleep, you can finish it later," I say as she happily snuggles up in my blankets.

I'm about to turn away and leave her to rest before she looks up at me. "Love, love." I stop for a moment as she says that.

I smile widely as my mild shock wears off, "I love you too, now sleep." I say softly as she quietly chirps before drifting off to sleep as I gently pet her.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :}
Current year 993, nearly another year down!

If you couldn't tell I played a lot of Elden Ring recently. YOU FOOLS! HE WAS THE ELDEN LORD THIS WHOLE TIME! HAAHAHAHA.