That chest looked… enticing.

Honestly, it was probably the first thing in this whole place that actually screamed fantasy realm. Who knew what kind of loot could be in there? 'Gold? Magic relics? A cursed amulet that would absolutely ruin my day but in a really cool way?' I let myself fantasize about the possibilities for a few glorious moments before letting out a pheromonal sigh.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to check it out, it wasn't my top priority.

The disturbance around the water pump had my full attention. According to Miryam, the marks weren't fresh, but they weren't ancient either. Recent, but not like 'last few days' recent. More like weeks. Still, that was something.

And if it had been within the last few weeks, that meant it happened since I arrived.

I was pretty confident in my two-month timeline—I could be off a little, sure, but not by much. Which meant whoever or whatever left those tracks had passed through after I was 'planted' here.

And then there was the shape of the tracks themselves.

Miryam hadn't been able to tell for certain—her ants weren't exactly tracking experts—but something about them seemed… humanoid. The prints were large, distinct enough to stand out but too soft in the sand to confirm details. More importantly, there weren't any additional swipes or scuff marks, no sign of a tail, dragging limbs, or extra appendages. Not that I knew what to look for, but I trusted Miryam being as she could actually see it.

It looked like someone—or at least something bipedal—had come to the pump, tried to get some water, and then left the same way, slipping through a backdoor in the kitchen.

'What would I even do if it actually was a person?' Would they be like me—someone from Earth? Or was it just as likely they were local?

The sheer emptiness of the houses, the decay that had crept into every inch of this place, seemed to suggest otherwise. But honestly? I had no way of knowing. And neither possibility was particularly comforting.

Even if I did somehow find them, or more likely they find me, I had no way of talking to them. No way of making them understand that I was, in fact, a sentient being and not just a plant. To them, I'd be nothing more than scenery.

At best? A potential food source. Or a sign of water.

At worst?

'Kindling.'

'Yeah, no. I have absolutely zero intention of becoming fire-fuel. But what can I do?'

As Miryam finished regrouping her ants and disappeared into her ziggurat for the night, my thoughts spiraled down every possible path that I could think of. The entire night, I planned. Ideas came and went, half-formed and discarded.

By morning, I had a plan. Several, actually.

It then took most of the morning to convince Miryam to go along with it, but eventually I was able to wear her down.

Two whole leaflets. That was the price. And that was only buying me two days of her ants following the trail. And it had to be a now payment, not a later payment like I had been able to promise her earlier.

To be fair, her workers were very, uh… let's say gentle when removing the leaves.

Health: 12/16

And by "gentle," I mean in the same way that accidentally slicing your finger while chopping vegetables is gentle. A continuous but clean burn of pain. Not unbearable, but definitely not pleasant either. I could do nothing but sit there and watch as her ants carefully carried away my freshly clipped leaflets like some kind of grim offering.

Shortly after, Miryam set out with her expedition. A few of her ants stayed near the base of my stem to relay anything she might find.

In the meantime, I began to grow.

Stamina: 37/42 (62)

…

It took 26 days to complete the project. And during that time, I learned a few things. Mostly thanks to Miryam. First of all, the tracks. Miryam followed them for the two days… at first. However, after she found the remnants of an actual campsite, she followed it for quite a bit longer. Up to a full week out.

She found the remains of a few more camps during that time, but in the end, she hadn't found any actual people. She couldn't tell much, besides the fact that who ever they were, they weren't even alone. She found evidence, and bodies, of several fights with what could only be described as monsters? Or some really weird animal.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They were some kind of lizard dog. They had large, lean bodies, similar to a Great Dane. However, their faces were more triangular, they had long, whippy tails, and wicked looking claws. A soft type of scale made up their skin. It looked like they had fought these things several times.

While she had found traces of a lot of blood across the battle fields, she didn't find any other bodies. Just the weird lizard beasts.

After the week was over, she decided to turn back. Partly because she was starting to feel nervous about having part of herself so far away for so long, but also partly because even after a week of travel, she was still in the city. She believes that the path she had followed had curved, kind of spiraling in on itself, going deeper into the city, but she couldn't be sure.

Unlike me, she could see, but she was still a mass of ants and couldn't actually see that well. For all she knew, she really could have been going in circles.

The other thing that happened was that I managed to convince her to check out the chest. While she seemed to be primarily concerned with just tending her 'fields', aka my little dirt patch, I was able to appeal to her sense of wonder.

The sucker had been sealed up tight. She didn't have the strength to try and open or move it. Even with a bunch of her ants working together. The amount of them she would need to do either, wasn't very realistic for fitting into the space to do so. So, she decided to bore her way in. Chipping a little bit of wood away at a time at the top of the chest.

Eventually she had managed to break through. As for what had been inside, it looked like cloth. Or the remains there of. Being locked away in the chest, they had lasted far longer than most anything left out in the desert air. However, they were still quite old.

Or, that's what we thought at first. Miryam had decided to process the cloth. To cut and strip it into little bits that she might be able to use for some of her projects. Halfway through the stack, she found something. It looked like a gem of deep blue and despite the age of everything else around it, it looked shiny and new. Much to my chagrin, she ended up leaving it in the chest for now. Later, at another point, she might be able to carve a hole big enough to carry it out, but for now, there wasn't much she could do about it.

That left my project. My nearly month long project. Compared to my root expansion, this went painfully slow, but I managed to finish it. Above ground, I was fairly lacking. Not much larger than I originally had been.

Just a bout a foot tall from the base of my stem to the top before it splits off into my four vines. They looked more like the branches of a sapling at best, but Miryam was adamant I was technically a vine, unlike the trees I recall seeing being called a wisteria. Apparently, it was how they were grown, like a bonsai. Guided to grow around each other to form a trunk before branching out.

Anyway, I continued and focused on that growth. I lengthened my vines little by little over time, even splitting the vines into more, smaller tendrils. At the same time, I promoted leaf growth. Thickening the leaf coverage I had. I didn't grow taller at all that much, but I was happy with the end result.

By the time I finished, my tendrils were touching the ground and a thick, I guess canopy, of leaves sprouted off the vines. Likening back to the bonsai reference, I looked like a miniature willow tree. Well, almost. Close enough.

It provided me more cover, which honestly, was only part of the goal. The rest of it was what I included into, or rather onto, the vines. A combination of sharp thorns that grew from the tendrils and thin spines that grew along the edges of each leaf. Each one of them was designed to be able to secrete a poison against anyone who got pricked by one. The ants and other small insects should be safe, you know, except for my honey pots. But safe from the pokey-stabby bits. Hopefully, anything that came by to try and grab or eat me would have issue.

Experience: 175.52/300