How am I not fucking dead!? It was pain, so much pain, that cat lady poisoned me, then the last thing I remember is going to sleep. I feel around and notice I’m in my pod, connected by the vine and submerged in sap. I give myself a thorough look over but find no evidence that I’ve even been injured or even in fights at all. My shoulder is healed up, and a quick waving around of my arm confirms it’s working properly. Nor are there any stab wounds on my leg or neck. But I though….. No, maybe I’m hallucinating, or was and now I’m not.

I turn my attention to the environment around me to look for signs of battle and I don’t have to look far. Oh, I guess I didn’t survive after all. Directly below my pod is a humanoid skeleton, wearing tattered clothes and a torn apart sack on its back. The roots of my pod pierced through the clothing and intermingling with the rib cage. Oh god I think I might be sick, that's definitely me, was me. The tunic and pants color match to boot. How is this possible though, I didn’t deploy my pod, at least I don’t remember deploying it. And aside from that I was killed, or was I. uhhhggg none of this makes any sense! Wait, why the fuck am I complaining? I should be dead, but I’m not. I sit for a moment, then start laughing at the insanity of it all, as much as one can laugh while submerged in a sap fluid with no air in their lungs. This world is so fucking backwards I’m complaining about not dying, not dying of all things! Well I for one have had enough of this bullshit. Getting chased around by maniacs looking to cut me up for whatever fucked off reason they managed to cram inside those pea sized brains of theirs. Fine then, if they want war, I’ll give it to them. Because it’s war or death, and I sure as hell don’t plan on dying, again…. I think, ah whatever.

I start by looking outwards and see a sea of white before me. The tree’s have shed their leaves, having nothing but barren bark exposed to the world, and even that is mostly covered by a thick layer of snow. God damn I was out for a while apparently. All the plants have either shriveled up and died for the winter, or been buried by the two feet of snow outside. Great, perfect weather for a plant monster looking to evolve and spread influence. Speaking of influence, I turn my attention as far out as it will go, trying to ascertain the current size of my network. I suspect I’ve been… asleep for a while so I expect it to have some size, but what I find shocks me. The radius of my network is about one and a half miles, I say radius because one side has butted up against the mountain, unable to progress any further due to the lack of plants and pure rock terrain. But the sides that have expanded unimpeded have gotten good distance, and even depth?

Wait, I can see something under the ground a little under a mile away from my pod. It has a five foot wide tunnel going to the surface with a giant underground chamber about a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. I can see about twenty doglike creatures with bat wings on their backs inside the hole.

Cratacumba (Level: 44)

Cratacumba (Level: 43)

Cratacumba (Level: 46)

Oh I get it, it's a den. But those things are a little high level for me, I’ll have to keep my eye on them until I can get enough to snuff them out. I don’t like having things that dangerous that close to my pod. Speaking of things close to my pod, I want to make more twiglings, but I don't think that's a good idea in the middle of winter. Most plants are dead and the remaining ones are using their energy to hibernate. If I start pulling nutrition from the surrounding area I may very well kill my resource sources off before they can actually provide. But I want twiglings! They were imperative to my survival up until the point those super leveled dickheads showed up. But enough of my bitching, I have points to spend as well.

Skill points: 21

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General skills:

* Universal Communication – Level: 1 (Max)

* Blend – Level: 10 (Max)

* Plant Forming – Level: 1(+)

* Mobile Podding – Level: 4(+)

Class Skills:

* Spell List-Life Magic:

* Weak Heal - Level: 2

* Weak Regeneration - Level: 1

* Weak Cleanse Disease - Level: 1

* Weak Cleanse Poison - Level: 1

* Weak Body Reinforcement - Level: 1

* Weak Body Enhancement - Level: 1

* Weak Body Focusing - Level: 1

* Spell List-Light Magic:

* Weak Shield - Level: 1

* Weak Bull’s Strength - Level: 1

* Weak Cat’s Agility - Level: 1

* Weak Bear’s Endurance - Level: 1

* Weak Fei’s Magic - Level: 1

* Weak Dragon’s Fortitude - Level: 1

* Weak Cleanse Curse - Level: 1

* Triage

* Inspire Courage

* Free Casting

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A few points to spend, and some skills and spells to spend them on. Honestly I think my best bet here is plant forming. I don’t want to take my chances with the snow since I feel stable, for now at least. Fuck it, I’ll dump it all into plant forming, it will make the process a lot cheaper either in time or mana costs.

Skill points: 0

General skills:

* Universal Communication – Level: 1 (Max)

* Blend – Level: 10 (Max)

* Plant Forming – Level: 7(+)

* Mobile Podding – Level: 4(+)

And all done. Now lets try making some more twiglings. I activate my skill and select the twigling design for the level (eight) I had a while back, then I picked a spot and started growing. Instantly I felt mana and nutrition getting siphoned away to fuel the process, but this time the mana cost was much lower. It's only costing me two thirds of the original amount mana wise, nutrition cost seems to stay the same. That's a massive cut to cost, and the skill has a few more levels. Still I need to be careful, twiglings take a lot of nutrition, and in the middle of winter not many things are making nutrition.

Nutrition: 83/100

Speaking of nutrition, mine is dropping rapidly. Alright I'll do a light pull to see how much the surrounding areas got. I concentrate on pulling and immediately notice two things. One, the trees in thus area have just over half their stores left. Two, there are three corpse flowers in my area all ready to provide nutrition. Not surprised I haven't noticed them yet, I only gave my area a general overview then went straight to twigling building. Two of them are growing out of small rabbit like creatures that are too decayed to observe any real details from, the third is growing out of a large half eaten creature that looks like a unicorn crossed with a cat. It looks like a horse but has a horn on its head, and instead of hooves it has cat paws.

Well, that's an interesting creature. At Least I got some nutrition out of it. I keep pulling nutrition and pushing it to the twigling as it slowly starts to grow. I give my mana an extra push to speed the process up even more and within the hour I have a fully functional twigling.

Race: Twigling: Level 8 (Lesser)

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Health: 105/105

Mana: 50/50

Stamina: 392/392

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Strength: 33

Agility: 28

Endurance: 28

Magic: 5

Fortitude: 15

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General skills:

* Flora Network Connection - Level: 1 (Max)

Finally some loyal minions to die for me. Better them than me, I do some prodding of the corpse flowers to see how much extra they have. Enough for almost two, I can pull a bit from the trees. I immediately get to work, spawning another twigling and focusing on it until it’s completed. After that I start on the third but put it in the back of my mind and focus on looking through the surrounding area some more. I got a few new plants to work with.

Razorbloom

A plant native to temperate climates, it uses razor like petals to dissuade most local fauna from consuming it's flowers blooms.

Oh me likely this a lot. Now I can slash instead of stab some bitches. Unfortunately their placement is not the greatest. It's a group of the three of them, near the base of the mountain. Right now they look like dead bushes because well, it's the middle of winter. But when they bloom they have green leaves with brown branches, and a yellow flower with, you guessed it, razor sharp petals. I can't move plants around unfortunately, aside from growing them out. And my creating abilities are limited to basic bushes and what amounts to log walls. Oh and twiglings, speaking of, twigling number two is done.

Twigling (Lesser) (Level: 8)

I start work on three, mana not being a problem thanks to me being podded. No the problem is nutrition, the lack of it specifically. The corpse flowers will probably be able to pull more out with time, but what if something comes along and decides it wants the half rotted corpse for itself. Although in this season I doubt much is moving around. Those dog bat creatures are probably hibernating, along with most of the stuff around here. Which means that come spring a lot more stuff higher level than me will be running around. I need to start building my twiglings and securing my area.