I Am A Carnivorous Plant

I waited like a smart little plant until the lizards wandered into a smaller, more constrained section of the fortress’s hallways and had to walk in single file, and then made my first move. Some of my tendrils quietly snaked out, and the last lizard in line was suddenly yanked away, with his face and arms allll covered up! Like a little plant assassin, I felt like I finally got my first true stealthy kill!

 

Or well, it was stealthy until I actually got to the killing point.

I guess a tentacle whizzing through the air and breaking someone’s neck by clubbing it is just enough noise to alert the lizardmen a few feet away.

 

Who knew? Honest mistake. It’s sad that I’m gonna have to wait on eating this one until after the fight.

 

Immediately, the other lizards turned around and got into a fighting stance. Two out of the three of them that were closest to me immediately started casting flame magic, and their hands began to glow with a firey light. The third one whipped out two daggers (Or maybe shortswords? Honestly, they looked a little bit too long and curved to be just daggers, really), and just like the hands of the others, they too lit up with a fire-y glow for a moment and then, you guessed it, also lit on fire. He’d stepped in front of the two magic casters to ready himself to fight me, and I threw the dead lizard further back into the hallway so it wouldn’t get in the way of our fight and readied myself. However, just before the one with the daggers could take his first move, suddenly the lizard in the back, the fourth lizard who had been guiding the group through the hall and looked the most leader-like, raised his arm in front of the lizard with the daggers and strode forward. He reached into the folds of his clothes and pulled out a small metal stick, and with the click of a button on it, it elongated into a spear, complete with fire raging on its tip.

 

Not gonna lie, it was a pretty cinematic scene, enough that I kinda wanted to clap after seeing it. Didn’t expect to find cool extend-o technology or any such gadgets from the primitive shit I’ve seen so far in this world. I wonder if the Fire Spirit folks are just really advanced or something? I mean, I guess my tentacles can also kind of do a stretchy extend-o move too, but I don’t think it’s nearly as cool… When do I get my own cool cinematic move, huh Forest?!

 

Of course, I guess the lizard leader with the spear wasn’t just trying to show off, since he actually immediately lunged at me and kicked the whole fight sequence off. It’s a good thing I’m as fast as I am, because I would have been swiss cheese (swiss plant?) otherwise from how rapidly he was attacking me. It was obvious that this leader lizard really knew how to use that spear! This was far from his first or even his hundredth time. Yeah, with how fast I was and how many tentacles I have, I should have been more than capable of taking on this one talented lizard.

 

Except, uh, it’s not just one lizard?

Soon the other lizards also joined into the mix.

…Guess these guys aren’t followers of the ‘one at a time’ fight rules that you see in the movies.

 

So yeah, fireballs started flying towards me, which made me need to dodge even more wildly than I already was, and some of my tentacles were being kept busy by that other lizard with the daggers, although that one didn’t seem quite as proficient with his weapon as the lead lizard did, thankfully. It’s a good thing I stocked up on some magic from the mushrooms I stuck on those piles of guard corpses before I came here, because I was having to regrow bits of myself left and right with this barrage of opponents. A spear stab through my abdomen here, a cut off tentacle there, various singe marks on my ‘head’ and root-legs… Yup, it really didn’t feel like I was doing very well right now.

 

Honestly? I was kicking myself for thinking this small hallway was a good place to start this fight. Like, I succeeded in the whole stealthily pick off an opponent idea, so like, yay for me, but then the after-plan of just shredding ‘em in this small space like I was a freaking blender really wasn’t going how I wanted. I knew they’d probably have fire abilities, being that they should have been from the Fire Spirit and all, but still, my stupid mind thought an enclosed space would be fine. Guess I underestimated these lizards way too much in my excitement. Wouldn’t be the first time~! It’s actually really a problem that I keep doing this, haha...

 

Well, if things aren’t going my way here, then a change of scenery is in order!

Why don’t we move somewhere a bit more green?

 

I snatched up the dead lizard’s body as I made my escape, and scrambled as fast as I could back to the courtyard with a burst of sudden speed that seemed to have really surprised the lizards. You know, I may have swung by here earlier to stock up, but I have SO many bodies here, and I actually have a small handful more mushrooms left to eat, so I snatched up the remainder to replenish the magic I’d already run through with all the fixing myself I’d been doing, and then settled my roots in for the long haul. I pride myself on being fast, as I’m sure is probably really obvious, but in actuality, that’s not what makes me the strongest. All this fighting against easy humans has made me too dependent on my speed. For this hard fight ahead of me, it’s probably better that I get back to my roots, hehehe~!

 

Hmm, but maybe it would be even better if I gave myself some proper motivation for this fight? I know I’ve already been eating more than my fill of humans because I came here, but now that I know such an exotic meal is just right here in my hands… Would it be so bad if I took a small taste? Maybe if these lizards are tasty enough it might inspire me to fight them even better! After all, what drives a carnivore forward more than the promise of a meal, right?

 

By the time the lizards finished chasing me and came into the courtyard, I’d already torn off the head and arms from the lizard’s corpse and was busy stuffing them down my wide open mouth.

 

“Ghk! You disgusting monster! How dare you defile Krilkcik’s corpse!”

 

=Hmm? But I’m just eating it, though? I may be a monster like you said, but I’m definitely not doing anything wrong.=

 

Yeah, the lizards all looked appalled at what I was doing, but for some reason the one with the daggers was who looked the most mad. He probably had some kind of personal relationship with the lizard I was eating or something. I guess they did walk next to each other in the hall… Eh, I was gonna put down this lizard’s body in a moment anyways, since I can’t fight with it in my hands (tentacles), so chill with the death-glares, okay? Really. It’s making me feel a little bad. Or, well, nah, I don’t think I actually have that kinda regret in me, but I feel like I should feel bad, you know? And that’s basically just as good, isn’t it?

 

=Hey, if it makes you feel any better, you’re all gonna get eaten by me in the end anyways, so I guess you’ll all be together again after that?=

 

Hmm, no, my words weren’t as consoling as I hoped they’d be I guess, since the dagger lizard wasted no time in leaping at me when he heard what I said. Oh well, how am I supposed to understand the delicate hearts of the lizardmen anyways? It honestly wasn’t my plan to provoke him like that, especially since I had other plans to lure them towards me, but this should still work for my purposes juuuust as well, right? Maybe they weren’t all coming to me in a group like I’d planned, but removing one annoyance and lightening my load was certainly welcome too.

 

As soon as the lizard ran over halfway to me, I let loose one of my spring-vines, which thrust up through the ground and impaled him. The lizard had good reflexes! After all, I’d been trying to stab through his chest, you know; The fact that I only got his leg is purely because he tried to dodge it. Too bad for him my spring vines basically explode out! Well, maybe if he’d known it was coming, like the others now do, then he could have dodged it more effectively.

 

You know what else is too bad for him?

My vines are still vines, and I can control them even after they’ve sprung, including the one that’s now pierced right through his leg!

 

This poor little fishy’s been caught, hook, line, and sinker!

 

Of course, he easily used his fire blades to cut off my vine, but who am I? There’s obviously more where those came from! A veritable wave of my thorn-covered tentacles were grabbing him all over his body and pulling him closer and closer to me. The leader lizard cautiously ran towards him, but I gave him his own little gauntlet of green wriggling vines of all kinds to work through, so he was slowed down far too much to get to his comrade quickly enough. Lucky for him, the dagger lizard didn’t even make it all that much farther towards me before the mage-lizards in the back sent some well-placed fireballs to help him escape. Unluckily for him, though, it was already far too late!

 

You see, my mouth has been open this Whole. Entire. Time~!

 

The dagger lizard had already stopped fighting my vines, and was now puffing for air with bits of foam leaking out of his mouth. Yup yup, I’ve seen it plenty enough times; This lizard has breathed in too much of my toxic mist, and was now done for!

 

The leader lizard was smart enough to see what was happening to his subordinate and rushed back towards the two mages before he could be overrun with any more of my vines, although the thick wave of my vines that were chasing him certainly didn’t let him go without a fight, and continued to greatly slow him down. The mages, who had also seen that there would be no saving the dagger lizard, quickly changed their target to supporting the leader lizard’s escape instead. They did their best to use their flames like a flamethrower and burn through the rampaging force of my oncoming vines without also roasting their leader, and they honestly managed to get rid of them for the most part. Really, kudos to them. They sure knew how to use their flames!

 

Once again, though, it’s too bad for these little lizards that I also have gotten much better at my own manipulation skills!

 

Saplings steadily began to grow around them, but they were too busy roasting my rows upon rows of surging vines for them to really notice. It wasn’t until the trees had already encompassed them in a semi-circle that the leader lizard saw through their flames and shouted a warning to them to watch out, and by then the trees were so large and thick that there was no way for the lizards to run past them. One of the mages changed their focus from helping their leader to trying to burn the trees, but trees that thick weren’t going to burn very quickly, and with my magic being pumped constantly into them, they were healing more quickly than the mage could effectively burn through.

 

More and more of my tree-jail cropped up around them, even as my vines continued to chase the leader towards them, and when he finally made his way close enough, I completely enclosed the three lizards in my ring of trees, just like the treant had once done to me. Perhaps with their fire they’d have a much better time than I'd had, but it was going to be hard for them to focus on burning with dozens of my spring-vines constantly popping up and keeping them jumping around!

 

And on top of all of their other problems, I, their biggest problem, had just begun my toxic march towards them.

 

Here’s something interesting. Did you know that so long as I have at least some of my roots in the ground, my toxic mist doesn’t have to stop? It’s kind of cheaty to admit, but so long as I crawl slowly forward with my roots and keep a good chunk of them in the ground at a time, I can effectively move while also keeping my magic and toxic mist going. It’s slow as all hell, maybe only a turtle’s pace, but it doesn’t matter how slow it is when my prey is niiice and trapped. They just have to sit there and wait for my mist to seep through the gaps in the trees, and then they won’t have to struggle any more! I even grew the trees so that they would lean in at the top and block a bit of the air flow, you know? With all the fire they’ve been using, they’ve got to be low on oxygen, so that means my mist will have an even easier time getting to them.

 

I can already hear the mages gagging on the other side of the trees.

The leader seems to be holding out the best, but we’ll see how long that can last~!