A new broken test subject had been served alive to Bazil.

It was only the second one of those, all other sapients - numbering an outstanding three - that had been put in its planter for it to feed upon since the first one had been served dead, to the great disappointment of the sapient Grass. It had even been completely deprived of its meal one month.

Last time Bazil had managed to grow roots in its victim and explore his living body for three days before accidentally puncturing an important blood vessel and provoking too big an internal bleeding. The poor man had let Bazil with only a bag of rotting flesh to feed on. Tasty but disappointing meat.

But this time Bazil would not waste the occasion to explore a sapient body. Greeny had told the plant that, like the first time, it was a male that had been served. But, this time Bazil would sink its roots in Gnoll.

Greeny had succinctly explained to Bazil that Gnolls were rather common in the region. They were a species mainly living in tribes in savannas and the biggest settlements were located west of Wadrabak and its surrounding desert. Therefore it wasn’t that rare to see Gnolls in this part of the Keln Caliphate.

There were actually three kinds of Gnolls journeying that far from their lands. Merchants, adventurers, and outcasts. Apparently, this one had belonged to the second category and had worked for the first one. An adventurer serving as a guard for a merchant until their caravan was raided by the Blood Sand Bandits. The man had ended a prisoner to the bandits, resisted slave training, served as a test subject for the Mad Alchemist, and finished in Bazil’s planter.

So, Bazil had a new body to put under its roots, one it would have to be much more careful invading than the previous one. At this point, Bazil had invaded so much of the walls of the bandits’ town and made so much more bug traps and dicktatoes in there that it was confident that if its original parts were to be severed its conscious would stay in the walled parts. That meant Bazil no longer had to be so careful to stay inconspicuous. At least, it hoped so.

Focusing on the long and supple roots its captors had coiled around the poor Gnoll. The plant decided to grow its roots all around the guy, thorn and poisonless roots, it wouldn’t do to accidentally kill him that soon.

After a full day of growing roots, Bazil now had the inquisitive bits lining against the man’s natural openings. At any moment, the sentient plant could decide to grow them in any of them. Greeny had told it that the alchemist was all over the broken moon comparing Bazil’s advance on this victim to its advance on the first one.

If the Beorn was so elated with the change in Bazil’s invading strategy, the plant deduced the man would not intervene and severed the roots escaping through the planter’s bottom and into the wall. Not that the Alchemist knew they were there in the first place. And anyway, Bazil had solid hopes to survive the actions if it happened and to complete its escape then.

If Bazil had not done so itself yet, it was to make the most of its presence in the lab. Potions of any kind, delicious meat to sink its roots in, and the too-rare living body to explore. Not forgetting that the longest Bazil stayed there, the more time it had to grow in the walls and secretly take over the place. Of course, there was also the faint possibility that Bazil’s escape plan would fail, but it didn’t think about it. The plant much more enjoyed focusing on its meal.

Half a day of rest after covering the Gnoll’s face and rear with safe roots, Bazil decided it was time. It slowly grew a root in the man’s mouth, passing along the sharp teeth and above the tongue. For a bit, Bazil had feared the Gnoll would react and bit the root off, but it seemed he was so mind-broken after Mikhaïl’s actions that he was not even registering Bazil’s root reaching his uvula.

Bazil made sure to make this root thin enough that liquid food could still be fed to the man, and supple enough that it didn’t risk to break if the man’s head was turned. Having the man dying of thirst or hunger would be quite stupid, particularly since the lab’s staff made their best to keep him alive. If he died, Bazil could no longer use him. Oh, it could try to feed the man by itself, but that would require a level of control over its current abilities it didn’t have yet, or entirely new abilities. Bazil would attempt such things in further test subjects.

Fortunately for the sapient plant, the anatomy of Gnolls was close to the Human one and it could lean on its memories from its previous life. It was not an expert on the subject, but anyone going through school would pick up a minimum of knowledge on the subject. So, after conquering its victim’s mouth, Bazil grew its root deeper in the man and reach the throat.

When Bazil’s root reached the junction between the trachea and the esophagus, it hesitated in which direction to go. One way led to the lungs and Bazil could end up suffocating its poor victim. The other one would make the root reach the broken-minded Gnoll’s digestive system and Bazil didn’t really want to have its roots digested while still being attached. So the sapient plant chose to stop there for this part.

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Instead, it brought back its focus on the Gnoll’s face and extended a root through the man’s snout. Bazil’s root went through one of the nostrils and rejoined the one already in the throat through the larynx. Or was it the pharynx? Bazil wasn’t that good at naming body parts, but if it remembered correctly, the larynx had something to do with the voice, so it was probably the other one. But who cared? Certainly not Bazil.

So, now that it was well established in the man’s muzzle Bazil decided to move to a higher target, it started growing a third root to enter the Gnoll, this one through an ear. Incidentally, Bazil decided to go through the earhole on the same side as the nostril it had invaded, the Gnoll had roots crawling on his face and half of it was being invaded by said roots.

The root slowly entered the Gnoll earhole and rather quickly reached the eardrum. Unlike with its first victim, Bazil didn’t let half-random thorn pierce the skin before getting some roots under it. This time, the sapient plant grew the tiniest thorn it could at the very tip of its root and slowly pierced the eardrum. Having a small thorn atop a root was a good idea actually, Bazil would need to keep it in mind, that could turn all of its roots into piercing weapons. Slow piercing weapons maybe, but piercing nonetheless.

Slow and steady won the race. Bazil reminded itself, it could do nothing about its slowness, so it was trying to live up to the saying.

Anyway, Bazil’s root went through the Gnoll sensible eardrum without him reacting in any way, he was that mind-broken. While the intelligent Grass could have gone from there to the brain, it was far from ready to try and mess with things up there. Instead, the root went down through the Eustachian tube and rejoined its previous roots in the poor soul’s throat. Bazil actually remembered the name of this organ since it liked the name.

And now that Bazil had gone through the holes in the man’s face, it was time to enter other natural orifices. Lower ones.

Bazil didn’t really want to go through there, it was a certainty the man hadn’t been cleaned as much as Bazil would like. People often didn’t think of it, but you didn’t perform anal or urethra play without a minimum of preparations. Actors and actresses of the porn industry did those things off-camera before the action. Bazil didn’t think the people of the lab had taken care of that, and since it had now been three days since the Gnoll was half-buried in the planter, it wouldn’t matter.

Plus, the man’s waste had directly arrived between Bazil’s roots, so it wasn’t like it would change a lot of things.

Bazil started by growing a root in the Gnoll’s anus. It made it go up as far as it dared through the rectum then the colon before stopping at the end of the intestine. The former Human remembered the organs it had colonized were more useful for the preparation of shit than the digestion, but it didn’t remember more details about that stuff. Not that they were really important, knowing that growing roots there would not kill its victim was enough for the miscellaneous plant.

Hey, having highjacked those organs meant the Gnoll would no more make fecal matters to poop on the plant’s roots, the roots would directly absorb what wasn’t digested by the man. Not that a lot of those were produced anyway, since the Gnoll was only fed liquid food.

Bazil didn’t dare go up the intestine yet, for the same reason it didn’t dare go down the stomach. Digestive acids were certainly too strong for Bazil’s roots.

Bazil still had one last hole to go through, the urethra. A bit grossed out by the thought, the sapient plant gathered its wits and started growing its inquisitive root inside the Gnoll’s cock. All in all, it wasn’t hard, Bazil quickly reached the bladder and could now empty it by itself instead of waiting for its victim to do it. The substance actually had some nice stuff for it, nitrates were expelled by mammals’ urine and were actually useful for stimulating plant growth. Well, Bazil wasn’t sure if directly having roots in a man’s bladder would be that useful, but that would not stop it from doing it.

The stranger thing that had happened to Bazil during all of those roots’ growth was the moment it had went near the Gnoll’s prostate. Unknowingly stimulating the male organ or not had had an effect on his penis. The erectile member had grown hard and big before Bazil could do anything about it, the plant’s thought process was too slow to react in time and stop the slow stimulation. Fortunately, Bazil had made the roots surrounding the Gnoll the most supple and elastic it could in fear of seeing them being damaged by a sudden move of its victim or from the people of the lab. That had allowed the roots to withstand the engorging of the manly member.

All in all, Bazil was happy with the growth of its root. It may have taken a full week to do it, but it had still grown all over the man’s exterior and the safe parts of his interior. Taking it slowly had kind of paid off, for now, Bazil’s Gnoll victim was still alive. But the hard part was still to come, the sapient plant still had to grow roots inside the very flesh of the broken-minded man. It really hoped that this time it would not kill it too soon to really experiment and learn. It would avoid main blood vessels to make sure not to repeat the mistake of the first time and bleed the man dry.

Bazil was planning to latch roots onto the nervous system to try and stimulate it. It should make the muscle spasm and send messages to the brain. The plant hoped to learn from it how to control a body. Oh, it knew it wouldn’t happen just like that, its slow thinking would prevent it from really do it, but it hoped to learn and to maybe unlock a Skill or some kind of evolution to take in the future. Magic and Systems could make possible things Science could only wait centuries or even millennia to start approaching.