As soon as I said the name of the place, another bird dived at us. There was a reason this was considered the best defended place in the continent, and it wasn’t just the sheer amount of funding for the military.

Plant eaters tend to be opportunistic carnivores, where if the only or best option for food is meat, they’ll take it. Almost everything in Vanguard was just flat out carnivorous, and you couldn’t walk a mile through the forest without getting assaulted by a deer or a frog. Hell, even the plants would try to kill you if you took too long! Most things would ignore us easily as we probably smelled spoiled, but the birds…are not active hunters. They’re scavengers, i.e they eat dead things. Me and Rye are dead things.

“You call this place the land of the capital? I’d hate to see what the slums look like.” One of the many things Rye had used to learn English was a dictionary, so he’d picked up a lot of words. How he remembered them all, I’ll never know.

I got up on my feet, trying to rebalance and get ready to walk when I hear two things: another bird, and the sound of metal crushing bone. Along with eating sounds a few moments later.

I turn around and Rye stands there, just eating the bird starting from the stomach, feathers and all.

He sees me looking at him and just shrugs, as if to say that he was feeling a bit peckish and it was right there. As if he hadn’t violently smacked it out of the air.

I shake my head at him a bit and we begin walking again. “We’re not going to a town again. Not yet.”

I look around, trying to spot a place to settle for a while. With how long we’ve been out and about, it seems like a good idea to get a permanent place, and if we can’t buy a house then we’ll find an abandoned one.

Actually, I spotted the next best thing: a small tower thing, like one of the things in the corners of a castle. It doesn’t look like it’s crumbling, and I sincerely doubt we’ll find a better place. I shake Rye by the shoulder and gesture to the tower. He didn't speak since he had food in his mouth, but he nodded, and that was enough confirmation for me.

———————————————————————

It was a slog, trying to get to the tower. Rye would slap the birds out of the air, either eating them or putting them in the bag. I would have to watch for literally anything else because of the life nana the vines gave off.

I did have one expectation. The tower would somehow be a dungeon, either having a boss at the top or bottom.

Dungeons were created when one of two things happened: monsters swarm in an area, or a core pops up somewhere, usually from an old possession of whoever was there. We didn’t have much luck, so I would bet that it would be at the top. We were getting close at least, and we were about to find out.

———————————————————————

It was a dungeon.

The monsters are fairly random actually, considering that the one I died in at least had a theme. This one had a mix of different species crammed into one spot. Both fortunately and unfortunately, most of them were bugs.

Why it was unfortunate is obvious, but it was lucky because of the class that Rye had gotten a few weeks back.

Harvester

You reap what you sow.

Skills

* Pesticide- Deal extra damage to bug related monsters.

* Gather- Pull in all entities within a 10 foot radius.

Was it the best class? No. But was it useful? Yes. He could use [Gather] to pull things in and just kill them bare hands or with the pans I gave him. Anything that was left, I just stabbed until it died.

We were fairly efficient, driving out the monsters if not outright killing them, and we leveled up several times. The confusion began when we reached the top. There was a monster here, a big one if the big patch without dirt was an indication. Leaning over the edge, I looked down from where we stood and saw a large crater, fairly deep and wide. Whatever was here, we had to be glad we didn’t see it.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I gestured for the two of us to make our way back down to the first floor. There was a basement too but I really didn’t want to go underground again right now. We’d cleared out all of the top floors, meaning we could finally start…settling, I guess? I don’t know if that’s the right word but it’s the one I think of.

Rye got down there first and he’d already begun unloading the stuff. There were some basic furnishings, with chairs and shelves and the like. It became apparent they would need to be replaced when he put one of his books on a bookshelf and it collapsed.

We began removing the vines from his body when we both heard something. A system alert. Rye pulled his screen up as we took off the last vine and we were greeted with something neither of us had seen before. An evolution.

Evolutions

Verdant Undead[Rare]

Conditions

* Have experience working with plants.

* Have/absorb sufficient life mana.

* Restore yourself with ambient life mana.

It gave him the yes or no prompt, and we were curious what would happen, so he clicked yes. He then proceeded to collapse. I tried to grab him, but the vines we had lying around enveloped him, making a cocoon of sorts. A system screen appeared, saying the evolution would take 12 hours total. I picked up the cocoon, propping it against the wall, and tried to figure out what to do.

The furniture was in bad condition. Might as well fix that.

I don’t have an ax on hand so my options are…make an ax or just use a knife to whittle it down. Neither would be easy.

I went down to the forest to saw off a couple of branches to make a stone ax, collecting stray bits of wood and stone. I figured that at best I could make an oven and at worst a campfire.

I was heading back up to the tower when I saw something. Next to the crater, there were circular prints in the ground about a foot and a half wide. Do I do the sensible thing and just go to the tower or do I follow the trail?

———————————————————————

I’ve never been great at utilizing my self preservation instincts. That was awfully apparent when I decided to follow the trail into the forest.

I left the stuff by the tower so I wouldn’t lose it, and went down with my knife, ready to…make a tactical retreat if anything happened. Yeah, that was it.

The trail went deep into the forest, broken trees everywhere as the path slowly gave way to an open clearing. Laying against the largest tree was a golem, maybe two times my height. It was made of a dark metal, with white crystalline veins leading from all of the limbs to the very center of it, where a bronze orb with shadowy divots spiraled around it in a strange pattern. The head was round shaped like a knight’s helmet, and where the eyes would be, there were two clear orbs, either crystal or glass.

It was probably what was on the tower.

I approached it and tried to use [Analyze] to see what it was, but all I could see was that it was a golem. That was the extent of what the system would say, and it only made me more curious. I stretched, trying to reach the core, and when I touched it I immediately felt something. Mana rapidly began leaving my body, most of it the typical blue. Occasionally I would see a bit of life and death mana, purple and green respectively. It all flooded the core and I pulled away after a second. The mana mixed in the core, becoming teal, and spread through the veins until it snaked up the neck and into the head. I ran off before it awakened, and I think I would’ve broken my neck and died if I was still completely alive.

I looked behind me, noticing the birds flying away from the spot, and also the fact I had run a mile or two in about five minutes. I can run faster now that I’m dead. Why is being undead actually good?

Yet another oddity, I would assume.

I spent the rest of the day fixing the tower so it was actually livable, at least by human standards, and I just “slept.”

I say it like that because it’s not exactly sleep. I don’t dream, really. People talk about out of body experiences a lot in guildhalls. Usually they just got really high, but when I sleep, my soul leaves my body until I re-enter it or get dragged back in at dawn. I just floated around, looking over the tower. It needed a name if we would live here. I recalled the name of the brand I had and decided on ‘Fort Pheonix’ before just wandering until Rye evolved.

———————————————————————

Vines.

The first thing that Rye saw when he woke up was vines. It was surprising, to say the least, but it wasn’t any more so than meeting another person like himself. Even more so was the sheer speed at which they grew. Back in the dungeon he was from, long before he became fully aware, he wouldn’t have grown as strong as fast unless he managed to defeat a particularly powerful adventurer.

Seeing the death mana circling his body, the bloody sword and shield, it was clear he’d fought his way up. He was determined to return, and Rye wanted to see why. He was a gardener at heart, even his earliest memories being of tending to the plants, and all he could think of was the prospect of seeing the world and all the life it offered.

He was a monster, sure, but he was also a dreamer. One that would try to reach their goal. He saw a light appear in front of him, and as he reached out, he knew that this would be the easiest thing they would do. The evolution was something that he gained by sheer luck, and it wouldn’t happen again. Not any time soon. He touched the light, and he fully awoke, bursting from the container.