I saw Rye burst from the shell and immediately went back to my body, where I saw him in front of me, standing there, menacingly.
I realize I never actually described him earlier, so let me fix that I guess. When I first saw him, his skin was pale brown, mostly from the dirt. His body was rather boney, skin pulled tight against the visible muscle that he had. After the vines restored his body, he looked a bit more normal, skin darkening naturally to a normal shade and body filling out so he wasn’t all skin and bones.
Now though? You couldn’t see the difference between him and a normal human. Not easily. Where there was previously exposed rotting flesh now sat something that looked like the inner flesh of a tree, rapidly hardening into a light, almost bark-like shell. Short, dark green vines grew out of his head, almost resembling hair, but not quite. His teeth, some yellowed and some rotted, were now slightly off white, like a white rose that had begun to die. The most inhuman things about him were his hands, still retaining their claw like shape, and his eyes, which were all black except for the pupils, which glowed vibrant, constantly shifting shades of green.
How did I know this, you may ask? I already said that he was standing right in front of me, but I neglected to mention that he was right in my face, wearing as wide a grin as was physically possible for him, which was pretty wide. I would’ve jumped back if I hadn’t been on the wall. Instead, I jolted and smacked my head on the brick.
I had to recover from the disorientation of hitting my head on the wall, but as I did, Rye laughed.
His voice had changed as well. Still rough and low, but more like an old adventurer or a veteran, recounting tales from their youth as opposed to Hell’s lowest bass singer.
As he helped me up, I realized that… he had no clothes now. He had been wearing a worn pair of pants on the journey here, but those seemed to have been absorbed by the pod. Thankfully, unless a monster was meant to actively breed, they wouldn’t have genitalia. No one needed to see that.
It was still odd to see him in this state, and the last thing I saw before turning away was a questioning frown forming on his face.
“What? Do I look that bad?” He placed emphasis on the last words, to show they were a joke. I’d need to work on subtlety with him.
“Clothes.”
He looked down. “I guess I can see why this might be a problem.”
“Yeah.” I rose to my feet, still averting my gaze. “I was going to ask if you wanted to help me find things to fix the tower, but we need to solve… this,” I said, attempting to gesture to his full body. He nodded in agreement and moved. I was almost to the door when, “How many floors does this place have again?”
“Twenty,” I tossed over my shoulder. “Take one if you want.”
I had no idea what that would lead to.
———————————————————————
I wandered around the forest again, gathering wood and plants to use at the tower for repairs and decorations. The Fort looked in good enough condition on the outside, and the first floor acted as the basic living area, meaning we just needed to redo…well, everything I guess.
I didn’t let that discourage me though. I had an absolutely absurd amount of flowers stuffed into my pockets, along with so many fruit seeds that I could’ve used them as ammunition in projectile spells. I’d gathered so much wood that I could easily make a thousand chairs with half of it.
I went a bit too far with collecting things.
By the time I made it back to the tower, I noticed something. Roots were coming out of where the second floor was and had wrapped around the first a bit. I went inside and…”Rye.”
I heard a skittering sound from above me and he poked his head down the stairs a few moments later. “Hello. Do you have the plants?”
I nodded an affirmation. “What did you do to the second floor?” He waved me over, gesturing for me to go and see whatever it was that he did. He did a lot.
I had to take rough measurements of the tower when I made the furnishings, and each floor was about 500 feet wide, and the base was square. Rye used all of it to grow plants. 500 square feet, absolutely filled to the brim with dirt and grasses that he could find around the tower.
Stolen story; please report.
I hadn’t even had a chance to see if there was anything up here.
“…Why?”
He just sat there, with a wide smile. I sighed before walking to him, handing the plants and seeds over when I saw a mark on his arm. A brand, flashing in and out of existence as if it shouldn’t be there.
“When’d you get that?” I said as I gestured to the emblem.
He didn’t even look towards his arm. “It was there when I evolved.” I used [Analyze] on him, to see the emblem, and got exposed to what looked like a small book’s worth of information.
“[Condense].” Everything immediately shrank down, showing two main things besides the core information: the monster type, and the emblem on him.
Verdant Undead
When death chooses to nurture life.
This is a rare evolution, typically only gained by accident or due to the creature being sapient.
Just below that was the description of the brand.
Brand of Paradox - Greater
Marked by a being wholly contradictory, of two opposing natures, that speaks false truths and truthful lies.
Conditions: Affinity to, or utilize, anything that contradicts your being.
I am trying not to scream.
Brands occur if a being is manipulated by another, if they’re cursed, if they’re blessed, almost anything if it’s major enough. One way to get a brand, known for how difficult it is to gain if not a holy class, is to get a deity to take interest in you. That god or goddess will then mark you with a brand that gives a blessing, and shows they have taken interest in you.
Paradox was the god of paradoxes, of contradictions, and he had just given Rye a greater blessing.
I began to scream confusedly.
———————————————————————
After a bout of loud, confused screaming, I sat in Rye’s garden, looking around at the environment he had created. That such vivid greenery was created by what was made to destroy life in the first place was amazing, and it was easy to see why Paradox took interest in him.
“You were very loud.” Rye, now clothed in the leaves of various plants, took a seat beside me and offered me a flower, a larger version of one that I brought.
I took it and pulled in a deep breath. “How’d you make this place anyways?”
He shrugged. “Just planted things and they grew.” I stared at him, getting a confused glance in response. “What? You know exactly how you do things?”
I nodded my head a bit to the side, to say ‘you’re not completely wrong.’ I reached up to a branch that was hanging above us and pulled off an apple, taking a bite and letting the juice drip down my chin.
“Do you have a name for this place?”
“No. It’s just my little garden.”
I chuckled. “I need to explain the normal sizes of things to you then.”
I took another bite of the apple.
…
“Did you know you’re marked by Paradox?”
“Who’s that?”
“Just a god. He’s interested in you apparently.”
“…You aren’t joking, are you?”
“Nope.”
He sighed. “Not the weirdest thing so far.”
We sat there till the next day.
———————————————————————
“Rye, come on!” When we had both woken up, we decided that it would be a good idea to go down into the basement. We neglected to explore it when we first took the tower, so it would be a good idea to clear it before anything else.
He stood next to me and helped me pull open the hatch to the basement, leading to a dark stairwell that seemed to emit a malicious aura. This would be much worse than the top half.
I went down before he did, shield ready. I am going to be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to see anything too bad down here. The first monster we encountered disproved that. It was a dark green [Slime] with a skull floating in its center around where the core would be. I didn’t get any time to react, as it jumped at me almost immediately. It’s body slammed into the shield, fluids that would destroy the shield in minutes leaking out. Tendrils reached around towards Rye, who had pulled out the [Panchaku] in an attempt to defend himself. Flailing, he managed to land a hit on the ones closest to him, keeping them from getting to him without giving him freedom to do much else.
I stabbed it with my knife, ignoring my rapidly dissolving flesh and forced it into the core. The tendrils stopped moving and I felt the pressure on my shield reduce greatly. I lowered it, seeing the near dead slime attempting to regather around the damaged core before completely stopping.
I looked to Rye, frowning. If what nearly killed us just now was a slime, one of the weakest monsters to exist, how much worse would everything else be?