I retreated inward, folding my outer vines into a protective do, leaving only my sensory roots buried just beneath the soil like antennae.
My breath, if it could still be called that slowed. The territory was listening.
The ash thickened.
The enemy? It drifted from the canopy, sifted between the air like slow-motion embers. Not a fire. Not yet.
But the heat in the soil told a different story. It was soaking into the ground. Spreading. Cooking the topsoil alive, terraforming the soil I called ho.
An intrusion. No, an invasion.
'Just what type of enemy is this?!' Tension bubbled within like coiled muscles, heightening my adrenaline levels.
My tendrils whispered across the forest floor, slipping through brush and roots, touching the corpses it left behind. A shriveled moss-patch, veins seared black. A withered pitcher plant, cracked like dried leather.
Everything in its path was dry. Dead. Like soone had dragged a sunbeam through the jungle.
And then...
DING!
~----~
[System Notification!]
[Damage Forecast Active] – Prolonged exposure to thermal aura may induce withering in peripheral stalks.
>Suggested Action: Defensive adaptation.
~----~
'Great!' I am so enthused.
A first look at this set of notifications would emphasize one thing, danger.
The encroaching, creeping danger threatening to suffocate , slowly driving crazy.
But I didn't focus on that. Instead, I read in between the lines; I looked at sothing else entirely that this system notifications showed. These notifications ant encroaching danger, but they also ant that the enemy was close. Closer than ever before.
I hissed under my breath, my internal core thrumming with tension. I didn't even notice my leaves shivering until I saw my kin plant; a slender fern-like creature barely half my height, curling inward, mirroring my dread.
He had no idea what was coming. I wasn't sure I did either, but the dread curling through infected him.
Twenty ters now.
The tension was palpable now. I could feel the subtle tremors of its movent. I could feel it literally reverberating through my stem, singing a lullaby of dread, and death.
Then I heard it.
A step. Not loud. Not heavy, but purposeful. asured.
A foot pressing into the scorched forest, pausing just long enough to taste the silence, then moving forward again. The rhythm and stalwart confidence of a predator who knew it had already won.
'The nerve of this bastard!' I snarled.
Seventeen ters.
Spite and rage was simring again, but I forced calm into my system. This ti, I felt like giving in to rage would do more harm than good.
Instead of giving in to rage and chaos, I embraced order. Calculative order.
Control. Order. Instinct. My vines slithered just beneath the dirt, positioning themselves in tripwires and razor shes. I adjusted pheromone excretion to mask the breath of life, camouflaging myself as decaying flora. Still. Waiting.
Maybe it was all useless. After all, this was not a plant, but a beast who could see with eyes, but I did it nonetheless.
And then, a shriek broke the stillness.
Sowhere to the north, a plant in my outer territory scread. Not in sound, but in signal. A call of distress. One of my thorn proxies.
An alarm!
It died mid-scream, then another system notification appeared.
~----~
[Proxy Thorn Node Terminated – External attack confird!]
>Remaining Distance: 12 ters.
>New Trait Identified: Thermal Fang Bite. Cauterization confird.
~----~
It was biting.
It was eating.
'A beast'. I confird.
I felt it then; a presence, oily and malevolent, pressing against the edge of my awareness. Not like other beasts who wandered blindly into my domain. This one... it was probing. Testing. Calculating.
It knew what it was doing. It wanted to feel it coming.
It was enjoying the fear.
'The Cinderrend Jackal'.
The na ca to naturally like the na of other monsters in the cursed world of Echoterra ca to .
No visual yet, only fragnts from trembling vines. It moved like smoke, limbs too slender to support the damage it caused. Its body emitted heat like a furnace, but its steps were deliberate, predatory. Nothing like the mindless carnivores I'd devoured before.
I whispered inward, adjusting root pressure. I triggered sap-based coolant flow, forced chlorophyll reserves to thicken my outer bark.
Adapt. Survive. Kill.
Ten ters.
Nine.
Seven.
A sudden silence.
Then... movent.
Whoosh!
A blur of heat tore through my left flank. My outer vine screen exploded into fla, flash-cooked into black ash in less than a second.
I didn't see it, but the aura it carried scalded everything it passed. My vines... I scread but there was no ti to grieve.
I retaliated.
Every hidden spike, every ambush vine, every trap I had prepared detonated in a single ntal pulse. Dozens of barbed whips snapped from the soil, converging on the heat source in a net of thorns.
SNAP!
A flash. A burn. A scream... but not from this ti.
Contact.
It bled.
A slash of molten blood hit the ground and hissed like acid. But it wasn't dead. The heat flared again, and sothing slamd into my core stalk. Hard. A collision like thunder, a furnace wrapped in bone and claw.
I reeled, thorns fracturing, inner vines trembling. My vision blurred; my territory scread. I countered with a lashing thorn vine aid directly at the heat mass.
Hit.
This ti I saw it, a glimpse.
Slick black fur that shimred like hot coal, eyes like burning pits, teeth too long for its snout, each glowing faintly, smoking as it snarled.
Its limbs were long, jagged, with scorched patches where fire had consud even itself. And from its body radiated a wave of destruction.
It wasn't just a predator.
It was designed to consu plants.
And then, the notification I've been dearly hoping for.
DING!
~----~
[WARNING: You have encountered a Wandering Apex Predator: The Cinderrend Jackal!]
[Type: Fire-aligned beast, anti-plant predator.]
[Threat Level: Extre.]
[Features: Sleek body, ember-coated fangs, emits a heat aura that wilts plant matter. Hunts during twilight.]
~----~
'Hehe'.
'Perfect, just perfect'.
'Motherf*cking goddamn perfect!'
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