I Am A Carnivorous Plant

I hate it, but I cannot deny my nature! If I were human, I would live as a human, but being a plant, I will live like a plant! Human values hold very little weight in the face of extreme nutrition!!!

 

I say all of that, but I’ve let human values stop me from eating nutritious things plenty of times.

They’re not gonna stop me from this one, though!

 

From what the oh so very smart Lily has informed me, these crabs don’t lay eggs. Completely doesn’t make sense, but she sounded too sure about it for me to doubt her, you know? Apparently the crabs give birth to the grubs directly, and after a while of grubbing around, the grubs slowly start to harden into their true, crabby form. I find that part much easier to believe!

 

So, if the crabs don’t lay eggs, then wouldn’t it be fair to say that these grubs are basically the eggs themselves?!

-Is what I’m telling myself to try to lessen the grossness of all this.

 

Even if I’m a plant and don’t have eyes, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have enough vision to see that these things look completely gross. They’re disgusting, really. I’m just not into eating such buggish looking things! Or at least, not when I can see them so clearly and I'm not desperate for food! But it’s impossible for me to pass up just how good and rich of nutrients they’re giving me; Really really impossible! It’s just as irrefutable as my love of eggs is! I just can’t resist its call!

 

So can you blame me if I sent my little minions off to find me all of the grubs that they could?

I honestly think I would have done the same thing back when I first discovered my love of eggs, had I been able to use them back then.

 

For some reason Lily didn’t comply with my orders, though.

 

<You know that we don’t have time to get distracted like this right now.>

 

Even though we both have the exact same unmoving face, it was somehow very easy to tell that she was looking at me like I was an idiot. Idunno, maybe her crossed arms were just extra effective at getting it across in some way. And I, for some reason, felt like a child that was being scolded for doing something stupid as soon as she said that to me. I had to put down the tentacles full of grubs that I was about to chug and everything, all because she made me feel too guilty!

 

=...Is it really so bad? I mean, don’t we have enough time to-=

 

<We won’t have enough time if you keep wasting it like this!>

 

=But if I eat enough of these grubs to get a little bit stronger, then-=

 

<If you keep eating these grubs to get stronger, then you’ll probably eat too many and piss off the Spirit of the Water soon! Do you want that?!>

 

=...No. You’re right…=

 

It feels heartbreaking, but I guess I’m going to have to let these grubs go… I’m bigger and I’m stronger, but I’m definitely still not strong enough to take on that giant snake yet. I shouldn’t risk angering the Water Spirit and getting the snake sicced on me like that, so I guess this is going to have to be goodbye between me and the grubs. How absolutely sad…

 

Shui, Trig, you can stop bringing me the grubs now…

Take a rest, you’ve earned it.

 

I wriggled my tentacles sadly, trying to shake off the lingering feeling of the grubs that used to be squirming against them, and poutily kept talking to Lily to distract myself.

 

=So which direction am I supposed to be going to get there?=

 

<Hmm? The Spirit of the Wind’s territory is to the west. Haven’t you already learned that before?>

 

Yeah yeah, I’m a big stupid idiot who forgot which direction belongs to which Spirit. Why does it feel like Lily’s always using her smartness to talk down to me?! I’d hit her for it if she wasn’t… Well, if she wasn’t me!

 

=...Haaaa, okay. Fine. And you’re sure that we’ll be safe once we get to the border?=

 

<You don’t have to worry about that. So long as you hurry along and stop wasting time, the Spirit of the Wind’s avatar should be very far away when we get there.>

 

Good. Because I’m sure if that thing saw us I’d get completely obliterated! I don’t think it’s quite on the level of the snake, now that I’ve met them, but ohhh man do I not think I’m quite up to that Avatar or whatever’s level just yet!

 

~~~

 

I spent so long in the Water Spirit’s territory that I almost forgot what it felt like to not feel uncomfortable all the time. It was like I could finally breathe again once I stepped back into the forest! If I could cry, I’m sure it would have brought a tear to my eye.

 

And you know, I really had to make sure I cherished that feeling, because I was gonna have to go right back to that uncomfortableness as soon as we made it back to the Wind territory.

 

I couldn’t dawdle too much, which is sad, so I basically full on sprinted for a few weeks before I made it to my destination. There were a few pit stops to snatch away a few tasty monsters and pet some wonderful capybaras, but Lily managed to keep me in line and make sure I was still going the right way, and soon we made it to where we needed to be.

 

…It feels like my fun frolicking time was very short-lived.

 

It’s amazing, really, being able to see just about the exact point where the Forest’s territory stops, and the Wind's territory begins. Apparently this isn’t naturally the Wind Spirit’s land, mind you; Just like the one I saw before, this one was stolen from us. And you know what makes it especially obvious that they stole it from us?

 

I can still see the corpse plant that’s supposed to be protecting this place fighting over there!

 

Just a little past the border I could see over twenty stocky people with various animal characteristics locked in a battle with what appeared to be… a mass of very thick and thorny writhing vines? It came up to almost my chest, and the area seemed like it was practically laced with tons of its vines threading in and out of the ground everywhere. The corpse plant controlled a very impressively wide area of its vines at once, keeping the attackers at bay with near perfect efficiency. It couldn’t really stab very well, but the speed of its vines as they rushed by, combined with the large and sharp thorns that they were covered with, were perfectly capable enough to shred up anything that got too close.

 

So to me, this thing seems like more of a defense type like Trig is, than a fast moving attacking type like Shui and I are. I’m sure each of us is capable of going on the offensive or defensive; I mean, I’m also able to make vines just like this thing is, even if it’s doing a bit better with them than me, and Shui in its adult form can make dozens of those little baby versions of itself to hold down an area. I guess it would be more appropriate to say we each have our different areas of expertise, really.

 

And this one’s expertise is 100% defense!

 

What reasserts that belief for me is the fact that this thing can basically teleport. During the fight there were multiple times that the animal-people who were attacking it used wind based magic against it, and it just used its thick vines to shrug those off. But when they decided to use fire magic attacks on it? Get this, it teleported away! The main mass that I identified as being its body just appeared somewhere else further away amongst its vines! It was almost instantaneous too, which was what made it even crazier. If it wasn’t so immediate, I would have maybe thought that it could just move really quickly, or maybe that it had tunnels set up or something. But no, it literally just disappears and reappears, like magic! Oh, well I guess it’s not like magic, it really is using magic! The most magical magic that I've seen so far!!!

 

Oh man, what I wouldn’t give to have a skill like that! You mean I could just be teleporting around the place instead of trekking my sorry self all over the fantasy plains? Could I have been taking little vacations to the capybara paradise and checking up on them this whole time?!

 

...Eh, but at least I have my speed I guess.

 

Can’t say I don’t like being fast, and with how specialized this plant seems to be, I doubt it really has anything to help it move very quickly besides that nifty teleportation. Yeah, just as I thought, this thing must be a lot like Trig; Slow, but very defensible.

 

From what I could see, the fight was really going well for my fellow plant for the most part. It’s obvious that these animal-humans wouldn’t be enough to take down one of my kind that was fully grown! The Forest Spirit made us way too strong for that! And really, even though I envy that one’s teleporting abilities, I don’t really need to go out of my way to get into a fight with it right now while I have bigger fish to fry. Best to just leave the forest’s defenses as they are while I take a little trip into-

 

Oh. Oh no, wait, it seems that what I came for is already headed here to meet me! Or maybe I’m jumping the gun here; What it’s really headed for is the fight that I’ve been watching!

 

…I guess this means I’m gonna have to intervene after all!