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Ridley had made a large, multi-room cellar back when he’d expanded the tavern a short while ago. Lillia hadn’t been quite sure what to do with all of it at the time. She didn’t have enough ingredients to fill the entire place, so there were just several rooms that had sat empty.

They could probably have been turned into rooms, but there was definitely something about living in the basement of a monster-themed tavern that felt like it was just a little bit too cursed.

And so the extra rooms in the cellar had sat empty in wait of use — right up until she’d gotten the [Hellish Nurturing] Title from the Mesh as part of the Menagerie’s rewards for destroying the Ashleaf Tree.

It had been a rather interesting title, simultaneously descriptive and also almost entirely useless at telling her the full extent of what it allowed.

[Hellish Nurturing] - Your dominion over the Hearth spreads to even the weeds that push their way up between the stones. Plants that you grow within the area of your home will be empowered and take on magical effects.

It was clear bait. The Mesh wanted her to see what the Title was capable of, but it hadn’t stopped there.

When she’d reached Journeyman 1, one of the skills it had offered her had been [Turn-ip the Grave]. The skill had been so stupid sounding that she’d been forced to take a closer look at it.

Lillia had been stunned to find that it was more than just a joke from the Mesh. It allowed her to gather power from all the magical plants she grew in her garden — or to reverse that flow of power and push it into them rather than taking it.

[Turn-ip the Grave] - Establish a connection between yourself and the organisms growing within your Hearth. Drawing on this connection will pull magical power from the plants and into you, permanently empowering you as long as they live. Reversing the connection and pouring power into your plants will cause them to grow faster and stronger. After sufficient energy has been imparted by this skill, certain plants may gain varying degrees of sentience. Sentient plants will obey your orders without hesitation.

Sentient plants that could permanently empower her within the Devil’s Den. That had been the push she’d needed.

Lillia had taken the skill and immediately gone about making a garden. She’d never had the chance to actually grow anything before, but she’d seen how some of the demons back in her cities had grown their supplies. Dark caves, lit by gentle glowing moss. They had been damp and welcoming, but she’d never gotten a chance to spend much time there. The gardens were rarely the ones under attack.

She didn’t have any moss, but she certainly had a dark room. And thus, Lillia had recruited Reya to help bring large amounts of dirt down into the cellar. Once she’d gotten enough, Lillia had then asked for a few large pieces of wood and assembled a five-by-five foot growing platform in the center of a room.

Then she’d stuck every single plant-related object she’d ever managed to get her hands on into it and waited.

Nothing had happened for several days.

As it turned out, both of her abilities actually needed a living plant to work with in the first place. That had baffled her to no end. The mushrooms and plants back in the monster caves had grown quite happily in conditions pretty similar to these, but even the weeds she yoinked from the streets outside had withered up just hours after she ferried them to her downstairs plant graveyard.

Lillia would never admit it if anyone asked her exactly what had happened, but truth be told, she’d gotten a little embarrassed and hassled over the whole thing. She’d never had a chance to grow anything before, and she was clearly doing something wrong, but asking after she’d already built a whole garden underground was just… more than a little awkward.

And so, she’d stuck the seed of the Ashleaf tree straight into the center of the dirt. It was a seed from a monster plant, after all. If anything could grow here, it would have been that.

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It had sat in her garden for a day, buried in soil, entirely unchanging. Her abilities hadn’t given her the slightest inclination that anything was working. Lillia had tried watering it with a number of different things.

Water. Grease. Various fluids that she didn’t want to name, including but not limited to pickle juice, oil she stole from the Infernal Armory, and blood from a particularly rowdy adventurer whose face Monica had introduced to a — fortunately — sturdy table.

And that had been the shifting point. The moment Lillia spilled the blood onto the dirt around the seed, something had changed within her garden. The soil shifted and a minuscule amount of energy bloomed within the dirt.

A speck of life.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so excited.

Of course, Lillia had proceeded to pour every spare scrap of energy she had straight through the connection and into that seed.

For days, she fed it, and her efforts were rewarded. The seed sprouted, a small, red-leafed sapling pushing up through the dirt and quickly growing to a foot tall. It thickened and grew a tiny layer of bark as black as night.

Lillia continued to water it. She fed the tree energy, blood, several other fluids — just to check — and a live rat.

It hadn’t eaten the rat, so she’d ended up just letting the creature remain in the cellar. It looked rather comfortable, after all.

That was, it had until she’d returned the next day to find the rat missing and a few bloodied specks of fur hanging from the now three-foot tall tree’s branches.

Lillia had kept her tree on a steady stream of nutritious rats ever since. It had been a little over a week since she’d first started her project, and the tree was now four feet tall. Its growth had lost its exponential aspect as it grew stronger and more solid, but it had more than made up for that in attitude.

Glistening leaves jingled as the tree rustled, noticing Lillia’s return — or the squirming rat she held against her chest.

It was probably the rat.

“Here,” Lillia cooed, tossing the rat into the air.

A root shot up from the ground and pierced right through the rat’s heart before yanking it underground in a blur. There was a small whump as the rodent’s body hit the ground and was pulled beneath the dirt, and then there was nothing.

Lillia rested a hand on the trunk of the tree. It rustled. A smile crossed her features. She couldn’t quite feel the monster’s thoughts, but there was a general sense of contentment and appreciation that came from deep within its bark.

“I like you a lot more than your dad,” Lillia informed the tree as she scratched its bark gently.

The tree rustled. That was a pretty fair response for a tree. It wasn’t like they could do much else.

Lillia continued speaking. She’d rather taken to speaking to the tree. It was a good listener. Not as good as Arwin, as it wasn’t very good at doing anything other than rustling, but it was an acceptable replacement while he was working.

“What kind of brothers and sisters do you want?” Lillia asked the tree. She’d yet to name it — she’d been too scared to. Her first plant, a weed from the street above, had been named “Happy”. It had died. The next seven Happies had met a similar fate, as had everything else she’d tried naming.

Granted, she’d tried to name everything in the garden up until the tree, but such was life. Lillia was determined not to name this plant until she was absolutely certain it had no chance of dying or ways to somehow kill itself.

“Maybe something tasty,” Lillia mused. “I’d like to be able to cook with some of the things I grow. Not the ones that get smart, though.”

The tree rustled.

A root poked her in the bottom of the foot. Not hard, but just enough to get her attention. Lillia blinked in surprise. That was new. She glanced down — and the thoughts drained out of her head.

Nestled near the base of the tree was a tuft of blue grass. It wasn’t anything Lillia had seen before, and she certainly hadn’t planted it — and yet, when she extended her senses toward it, she felt a connection form.

It was another plant. But, more than that, she could feel something within it. Her own magic.

“How did my power get into you?” Lillia mused, crouching to study the grass closer.

The tree rustled. Lillia glanced to it, then back down to the grass.

She placed a hand on the tree’s black bark. “Is this you? Did you direct some of the magic I sent into you into this grass?”

The tree rustled, harder this time.

And beneath it, the grass rustled too.

Then the grass pulled apart to reveal a tiny mouth buried deep within the earth, small spikey teeth working as it let out a tiny squeak.

“Well, would you look at that?” Lillia asked, a delighted grin crossing over her features. It — and the tree — still had no names from the Mesh. She wasn’t quite sure why yet, but it was fine with her.

Lillia had monsters growing under the Devil’s Den, and she couldn’t have been happier about it.

She just had to find a way to start growing a few things she could actually serve on a plate. Something told her nobody would want to eat mouth-grass, but this was progress. Great progress.

One step at a time. I might not have any food yet, but I can’t wait to see the expression on the next idiot’s face when they try to attack the Menagerie and I’ve got an entire horde of plant monsters waiting to rip them apart.

A bell rang far above. Lillia hurriedly rose to her feet and darted out of the garden, a smile still plastered across her face. She’d set the bell up in her kitchen for her imps to ring whenever a new customer walked through the door — and it seemed like it was just about time for the lunch rush to start.