Chapter 3

E and F ranked items were so bad that I hadn’t even wasted too much time looking through them. Things like string, sticks, or small pouches were all useless to a plant. Under those categories, the few items that were grayed out were now not, but still useless, like watering pot. However, now, with Terrakinesis, I can manipulate the ground to move objects into places. Maybe even create a perimeter of sticks. More things to ponder.

Under the D rank items, there were a few items I knew I was going to want, even if I couldn’t use them yet. But since everything is well over a hundred Tokens, I’ll move on to T3 skills for now. I must’ve spent a month browsing through everything, but eventually, through the numbing pain of boredom, I stumbled across the two skills I needed to acquire Devourer: Root Control and Monstrous Height. Root Control was odd because I already could control my roots, but then when I read the information on it, I had to admit, I couldn’t do that.

Root Control T3-L1:

Cost 30 Energy/Minute - Rapidly grow, manipulate, reshape, or mutate your roots.

Growth increased by 1000% for the duration.

Both that and Monstrous Height, which allows my stem or stalk to grow rapidly, cost 150 Tokens to purchase. Which means I was going to be bored for a while. Everything about being a dumb plant is so slow. I don’t know how the seasons work here, but I’m sure it’ll be changing long before I’ll be able to buy everything I need. Oh well, time for a long nap.

A long nap was what I wanted. Sleeping as a plant was different than when I was human. For starters, my plant body doesn’t shut down. It continues to function normally. My sleep is more mental, and to be honest, I just woke up, so it is not so easy to go back to sleep. So, instead of sleeping, I used the rest of my Energy for the day toward Absorption. I had enough to cast it three times, and on the third attempt, I got a hit for a new mutation. The first two attempts were to capture a fly or something similar to a fly. The third attempt snagged him good when he landed on my roots.

System Notification!

Absorption was successful!

New Mutation was acquired: Maw.

Maw allows you to eat things that fall into your mouth.

Eating things can result in Energy, Tokens, Skills, or other Mutations.

Then, another notification appeared.

System Notification!

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

You have one Mutation to

place. Place now?

Yes.

No.

Now, this is interesting. Maw is similar to Devourer. The only added benefit of Devourer is that it can occur anywhere my roots can touch, whereas Maw requires me to actually eat it. However, does Maw mean I have a mouth? Could I speak? Things to find out later.

Selecting Yes, I was brought into an external view where I could place the Maw mutation. I played around with the options for a bit but settled on the base of my stalk. Saying the words Confirm, the Maw began to grow from a cluster of roots that pushed themselves to the surface. Then the ground separated a bit, and the Maw sank into it to, more or less, hide it. It reminded me of the Sarlacc pit on Tatooine.

I didn’t have anything to eat other than my mushrooms, but even that was out of reach since I had poor root control at the moment. So, I began the long wait to build up enough Tokens to make my first purchase. During the wait, I again focused on increasing my max Energy, mushroom production since the critters kept eating them, and diverting Energy into growth to push the levels higher. I noticed as I grew taller and thicker, so did my Maw mutation.

One day, I noticed a small series of +1 Energy and + 1 Token notifications. So, I used Astral Eye to take a look and found my Maw was under attack by some insects. After making so many fungi, I unlocked new combinations. I had Healing Mushrooms, which were entirely green except for the blue dots, and I had Hallucinating Ki shrooms, which helped with cultivation. Those were black with a gold star pattern on the cap.

I had placed a few of the more beneficial shrooms near the Maw in hopes of attracting some critters to their deaths, but I ended up with what looked like ants but with beetle horns. Still, while they were small in value, their numbers made up for it. I had to spend Energy quickly to prevent wasting the gains.

While I wanted small critters to get through my defenses to be eaten by the Maw, I also wanted to prevent larger animals from getting too close. Since I had excess Energy, I used Terrakinesis to create a small circular barrier on the outside of my ring of shrooms. Then, I created holes and ordered a bunch of sticks from the shop. It would take me two months to manipulate those sticks with dirt to get them to stick upright from the holes, but eventually, I finished the task.

When done, there was at least a foot between each stick. The sticks were only about three feet tall and not very sharpened, but hopefully would ward off anything too large. Or maybe they’ll just trample them anyway. I had a lot more work to do, but I needed access to higher-grade items and more quality skills.

Finally, the day came when I could purchase the Root Control T3-L1 skill. I quickly used it once to see how much control and found I could do all sorts of things. For starters, I made many of my roots much thicker and grew them rapidly to fill my entire place within my circle with roots. I then discovered I could apply Mutations to the roots, which meant I now had roots with thorns. A bird was swooping down to grab a mushroom, and I shot roots out of the ground and ensnared the bird. This was exciting! I used the roots to drag it to the Maw, which slowly munched away at the avian creature. That netted me 12 Energy and 19 Tokens, nice. Then I got a notification for my Realm advancing from Stage 2 to 3 of 9.

Interesting, so I can advance stages based on new feats, too? Good to know. I had gotten my max Energy up to 49 so far but had only advanced most of my skills to level 4. Perhaps hitting certain milestones might advance me again.

Root Control gave me many new ideas for options for defense. First of all, aside from directly reaching up and ensnaring prey, I could use the skill as a sort of replacement for hands. This made sticking sticks into holes a lot easier, sure, but I had more in mind. One of the D rank items available for purchase was wire. It would take a few months to complete, but I could weave wire between the sticks already placed. Now the issue was, how to find an electrical source to power my new perimeter?

Nothing in any of the categories gave me a solution. Getting the framework into place was just future planning, and if I learned anything about this new world, a solution would present itself. I just had to be patient.