I Am A Carnivorous Plant

Quick as lightning, a yellow blur the size of a truck rocketed out of the Wind territory, hurtling itself into the mass of vines. With crazy speed its mouth opened up, revealing its long, sharp, rodent-like front teeth, and the corpse plant’s vines were quickly chewed through, rendering the plant’s defenses absolutely useless. The plant tried use its teleportation to gain some distance and replenish its vines, but it was clearly a losing battle, the yellow thing that was chasing it down was right on its heels, and it was obvious to me and everyone else present that the plant wouldn’t be lasting too much longer.

 

Guess it’s time I step in, huh?

 

So that yellow thing is one of the ‘Pack’ that Lily told me about, right? Its hide looks… hard, maybe? It clearly doesn’t have any problem eating those thick, sharp vines, so the inside of it must be quite hard too… If I had to take a guess, I’d say it’s maybe some kind of super huge pangolin? Well, it’s a bit fuzzier than any pangolin that I’ve ever seen before, maybe a little like a cross between one of those and a sloth or something… But it’s very fast, so saying it’s anything sloth-like just kinda feels… Ya know?

 

Well anyways, lemme just insert myself into this fight now that I’ve taken a little look-see~! I know the thing looks hard, but let’s just give it a little test, shall we? I’m sure with how much I’ve grown it won’t be able to withstand all this new strength I have in these bigger, thicker tentacles of mine-

 

Oh. Alright. Well, I guess this thing isn’t just good at eating vines, but my tentacles too. Hmmm. Yes, that does make sense. I guess squeezing this thing isn’t going to be what kills it. And with what I felt against my tendrils while I was touching it, the thing is probably much too solid for me to pierce with a spring vine either.

 

Sooo then what if I take out a little something special for this guy?

I think I have juuust the right answer for this!

 

You know, the only real cost of me summoning one of my minions is a bleeding heart flower off of my head, not counting how much it costs in nutrients to keep whoever I bring out around afterwards. I have six of the things naturally, so I technically have six free uses of them without needing to grow any new ones (and then I gotta grow them back, which is actually almost as big of a drain to grow as my lily of the valley's are). Sure, I can only summon them one at a time, and sure, I really only have three summons to pick from, but if you're just focusing on that, you're ignoring the possibilities! Creativity is key, and all that jazz!

 

So far, from what I can tell, I can only have one of a certain plant out at a time.

…But what if I use that to my advantage?

 

Let’s say I grow a smaller version of Lily, one slightly older than a toddler so that she’s fast, but not so old that she’s a big drain on my resources, or, you know… uh, gets all smart and talks to me. And then what if I just send her off towards that weird yellow pangolin thing? Sure, she’s definitely not strong enough on her own to do very much to the thing, right? But she should totally be fast enough to be able to at least reach the pangolin, and she’ll be even more likely to make it if I throw her!

 

And then all she has to do is empty her stomach onto that thing’s head, and it’s toast!

 

Now I know what you’re gonna say. ‘Hey, just one stomach’s worth of acid wouldn’t be enough to get through the pangolin’s super hard shell, right?!’ And you know what, you’re completely correct! In fact, when I tried it just now, Lily actually missed a bunch of her acid and only ended up splashing some of it on the side of its face, at most only sizzling its skin a bit! But that doesn’t matter all that much; Any progress is good progress, and that was really only a test launch. Now that I’ve given the pangolin a warning shot, it’s time to hit it with the real deal!

 

The reason the pangolin was able to dodge getting all the acid dumped onto it was simply because it wasn’t distracted enough! It saw Lily flying at it, and it was able to dodge out of the way a good bit, which honestly was a very smart move on its part! So if the thing needs a proper distraction for my little bomber plants to succeed, then why don’t I just give it one? Let’s see… I’m sure a fully grown Shui would do the trick just fine!

 

I planted my second heart, putting out an adult sized Shui in the next few seconds. Luckily the pangolin was still trying to wipe at its face, desperately trying to get rid of the remnants of Lily’s acid that was still stinging at the side of it. But the thing was a warrior, one of the ‘Pack’ that I’d come here to hunt, and that meant it wasn’t going to drop its guard just because I’d caused it a little bit of pain. When Shui suddenly started sprinting at it, it immediately got back into a fighting stance, pain be damned, just like I would have expected it to! But it refused to launch the first attack, only keeping its distance while giving Shui a watchful stare, as if it had learned from Lily barfing all over it, and wasn’t going to let these strange plants of mine trick it twice.

 

How great! How nice! If it’s just going to sit there defensively and watch, then let’s put on a little show for it, shall we?

Let’s see how good you are against a barrage of little guys full of sharp teeth attacking you!

 

After closing a bit of the gap between the two of them, Shui unraveled its root-legs and planted them. Surprisingly enough, it also planted its two tentacles from its bush into the ground, like it was trying to brace itself, and then it began to shake itself vigorously like a wet dog tryin to dry itself off, putting extra force into waggling its bush on its back. I could feel the sudden drain on my magic as small bush after small bush came tumbling out of its own, sprouting little feet and discreet chompers mere seconds later, and then zooming off towards their target. Perhaps if I was still only able to put out one of my minions at full power instead of all three, then this attack from Shui alone might have been enough to starve me out; Just like I’d expect, it was actually really costly to just keep pumping out these little bush babies like this! No wonder the real bush-dog only put one down every so often instead of putting them all out at once like this! Thankfully though, I’ve grown very very strong off of eating those Aqua Cores. You’d be absolutely amazed at the amount of resources I still have left at my disposal! Make all the bush babies you like, Shui! I still have tons of nutrients and magic left to spare!

 

Okay, let me be real, I’m sure that the little baby bushes that Shui is continuously pumping out right now aren’t going to do a single damn thing against that pangolin. The thing is basically killing them immediately as soon as they reach it, just with a single big swipe of its sloth-arms, and still has plenty of time to look around and act wary. It's a pain, but I guess I’m gonna need to give it a bit more of a distraction to work with if I wanna move onto phase two of this plan, aren’t I? I mean, there’s a chance that the bush babies actually are distracting it enough for me to get a good bombing on it, but my gut tells me that if I throw more of my Lily bombs now, it’s totally just gonna dodge out of the way again. Maybe it would still work a little and splash a bit more onto the thing’s face, but considering I only have four more bleeding hearts to work with before I’ll have to regrow ‘em and waste a bunch of resources, I’d rather make ‘em really count, you know?

 

Oh well, I guess I’m just gonna have to step in here for a moment and grow some vines-

 

Oh my gosh, some vines!!!

 

I’d completely forgotten about that thorny vine corpse plant from earlier! Honestly, I thought it would have run off! But I guess this must be its territory we're in, huh? It must want to stay and fight to defend its lands, even if it’s clearly outmatched! I can only be thankful that its hatred of other Spirit’s invaders is greater than its hatred for other corpse plants; Having to fight with this thing while also keeping the pangolin in check would absolutely suck right now! Especially since I don't really wanna kill this plant.

 

Anyways, as I was saying, the plant came back out of nowhere and suddenly started growing a bunch of vines!

 

Dozens of large, thorn covered vines weaved in and out of the ground, growing at insane speeds towards the pangolin. They were even thicker than the vines that I’d first seen the plant using, about as thick as a fully grown oak tree’s trunk, and with thorns sticking out of it the size of scimitars! The vines drilled their way towards the pangolin, bursting out of the ground next to it with explosive speed, and wrapped themselves around the pangolin’s torso before it even had enough time to react, painfully restricting it. The thorns sought out and dug into the small seams in the pangolin’s natural armor, managing to pierce into the thing’s flesh, and causing it to let out an even more pitiful set of grunts and wails than it had when the acid had splashed against its face.

 

Yeah… Okay, that definitely seems like enough of a distraction.

Thank you, vine monster! You really saved me some work here!

 

Now that I’m giving it some proper attention, apparently the vine plant has been busy while I’ve been focusing on the pangolin. I completely forgot there were other, lesser, animal-people opponents on the battlefield, but apparently the vine monster didn’t! Underneath its main knot of vines, I could see several bloodied, ripped up corpses being pulled farther and farther underneath it. It seems like it's probably mulching them up with its thorns like teeth, and eating them. I don’t even want to guess how gross it looks under there!

 

Well, let’s not waste a fine opportunity! The pangolin isn’t able to move very much right now, and it’s busy trying to struggle against the vines and Shui’s bush babies that are now smothering around it like a tide. If that thing is going to stay nice and still for me like this, then it’s about time for me to let my bomber Lily's fly!

 

A one, and a two, and a three~!

 

The good news is, there’s really not much of a cooldown between me being able to grow the same plant. Once it dies and turns to dirt, the only real delay for me putting the next one out is the short growth time. It’s really convenient at moments like this~! The first Lily in the batch that I threw managed to latch onto the top of the unsuspecting pangolin’s face, and completely emptied her stomach onto it. The sizzling sound was absolutely horrible, although it was mostly drowned out by the screeching a second later. I can only imagine what it must have smelled like, too. I guess the pain was too great, because the pangolin completely gave up on protecting itself from the vine’s thorns that I could see twisting and wriggling against its wounds, along with the much lesser threat of the bush babies that were gnawing all over its body like little rodents. Its sloth-like claws came up to wretchedly scratch at its face as it writhed in agony, and the scene it made was truly, very wretched.

 

…Too bad for it I’m a heartless little plant!

Let’s unleash the second volley, okay!

 

The second Lily of the batch was thrown, although this time the pangolin’s claws and arms blocked some of it. That’s perfectly fine though! Any amount getting onto the thing’s face at this point is just another nail in the coffin, really! I’ll just throw Lily number three, and I’m sure those silly roadblocks that the pangolin put up won’t be in the way for much longer~! Yup, those won’t be protecting anything anymore~!

 

Alright good, the thing is basically toast! Now all we need is-

Oh…

Ah, right… I was told these things run in a ‘Pack’, don’t they…

 

As I readied my fourth Lily bomb to finish the pangolin off, deja vu struck, and another yellow streak joined the battlefield. Past the pangolin, past Shui, past me- It rocketed almost faster than my sight could track it, and smashed towards the tangle of vines that made up my fellow corpse plant.

_____

AN: I hate to leave things on a cliffhanger like this before I go, but I must sadly disappear for now! I promise to get back to posting more of this story on the 20th of August, but for now I'm wayyy too busy for my liking, got my hands in one too many pots, and I need to take a lil break and sort through some burdens before I continue on. Hopefully I come back with some cool things to share!

If you're impatient to see more, I'll leave these down here for you ;P

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