A human!
A trial candidate!
Like . The only one that survived this far.
Along my expansion journey through this treacherous world, I t 2 more plant lives that were just like the first, trial candidates but like the first, they were already terminated by the ti I t them.
This plant, this guy... it was the only survivor besides .
I extended my senses, then I saw him. There he was; naked, skeletal, a plant but barely ford, still alive. His aura flickered like a candle lost in a storm.
I could have left him.
But I didn't.
Sothing in recoiled, but sothing else surged forward.
Not compassion. Not yet.
Just... mory. Fragnted, echoing mory. Screams. Jets in the sky. The last faces of Earth.
By now, it's been more than 2 weeks already since I got trapped in the Genesis Protocols. The concept of human, it felt like such an alien term already that eting a human again triggered the fragnted mories in my head again.
A human. An actual human just like I am, reborn, twisted to beco a plant.
I didn't just absorb the territory of the plant. First, I extended a part of my territory toward it, probing it, trying to communicate with it.
As a plant, I couldn't really communicate, I could only express how I felt.
And the words I was conveying?
Safe. Peace. Kin. Cooperation.
The plant seed to understand. I was not surprised, after all, this guy was once a human just like .
As my vines crawled out like veins across the land, reaching the pit where it had taken root, I felt it, an enemy. A hostile plant life.
This enemy was engaged in a territorial battle with the trial candidate, and it was winning. It was strangling the plant life out of it.
As soon as I detected it, I froze for a mont, then...
I felt it; a deep, primal, smoldering rage igniting within .
'You dare, you insufferable sunblind slugweed!'
BAM!
My roots erupted, attacking without hesitation.
Against a plant that barely ruled over a territory of 8 ters, I was like a giant. An unstoppable, inevitable giant.
I crushed it to death, feeding on its essence, sucking its evolutionary fragnts.
This new guy, he enjoyed sothing that I never got the privilege to enjoy... help.
It may seem small, but it ant the whole world.
Here in Echoterra, it was the difference between life and death.
And then...
~----~
[You have integrated the territory of a Dormant Trial Candidate!]
[Territorial Domain expanded!]
[Current Size: 44 square ters.]
~----~
My territory was close to 50 square ters than ever before, halfway to my intended target.
But at the mont, I didn't pay attention to that at all.
Rather all my attention was on him, the little . My kin.
A human, just like .
...
The mont I sensed it, I knew it wasn't a beast.
It was sothing... like . Sothing once human.
A trial participant. Still alive.
Still breathing in Echoterra.
The system notification already confird it. Besides, I already saved its life by killing its rival and it acknowledged already by willingly submitting to my rule, under my territory.
But still, I didn't hesitate.
I extended a vine through the underbrush, coiling it through fallen leaves and fungal bloom, parting layers of moss until I saw him.
A plant; no, a kin. Not one of the native flora of Echoterra, but like .
One who had awakened. One of the Trial candidates.
He stood no taller than a ter and a half. His stalk was lean, lined with fibrous cords and faint ridges of pale bark, his outer foliage bruised and dark from exposure. His canopy was small but structured; his leaves arranged in a spiral pattern, edged with thorns, though not nearly as vicious as mine.
From his roots sprouted tiny nodules; warped sensors, I realized were evolved to detect vibrations and hostile movent.
'Smart,' I thought.
His territory had shriveled, signs of retreat and abandonnt heavy in the air. Five square ters. A respectable amount for soone without allies, even more respectable since I knew how much I suffered to grow my own territory.
But now, he'd relinquished it all.
And submitted to .
By now, I was no longer just a sprouting weed clawing at sunlight. I had beco a monarch of thorns.
My primary stalk had thickened to the width of a tree trunk, bark-like in density but glistening with slick green veins and laced with black thorns that curved like blades. I towered above the forest floor, nearly four ters tall, a sentinel of writhing foliage and battle-hardened roots.
My crown stretched outward, with vines and tendrils blooming into thorny petals that pulsed with bioluminescent veins like a grotesque halo of war.
Every vine I extended was barbed and purposeful, capable of slicing through at and bark alike. Moss grew like armor across parts of my stalk.
My roots had grown aggressive, thick with pulsing strength, coiling and uncoiling like muscle beneath the soil.
I wasn't a plant.
I was a domain.
A growing, intelligent ecosystem of malice.
In contrast, the one I found, my kin, he looked pitiful.
He looked up to , if he could look at all, as one might stare at the sun from the bottom of a well.
He had no significant defenses, no heat signatures, no aura of presence. If there was before, it was already erased by the cruel crucible of this world.
There was just the faintest whisper of the Genesis Protocol. Weak, unsynchronized; a flickering fla in a storm.
I couldn't help but think.
I'd once been that small. That helpless.
But now? I was no longer just a plant, I was a monster. A monster plant.
I towered above him, a wall of pulsing green and black, my vines interlocking like armor. Thorned petals shivered as my war-pulse beat stronger. My presence smothered his like a storm cloud.
I expected fear, but there was none. Only stillness. Fatigue. Wariness. Acceptance.
His leaves fluttered, a signal. An attempt at communication.
But I couldn't understand it.
Not yet.
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