I felt absolutely terrible once everything had calmed down.

Not for threatening Saul and forcing the coward to kill. No, I fully stood by that. The man was absolutely craven and if I had to be the metaphorical gun to his head to force him to do his manly duties I absolutely would. In the long run it would undoubtedly be good for him and help him figure out how to do what far too many hippies had never learned, to take responsibility.

No, I felt terrible because I had something of a nascent migraine building in my head atop the general fatigue that had been building all morning. I got migraines like this on occasion, usually it was a sign of me going into caffeine withdrawal or the start of my third day without sleep. This time I felt fairly certain it had more to do with how much I'd been using Focused abilities, well kinda certain. It was a bit hard to think when it felt like someone had slipped most of a butter knife behind your left eye.

The migraine was filling my head with wool, making thinking all the harder and making me long for a shady spot to simply curl up and pass out for a few hours. If only we were somewhere safe and not on an abandoned road near where more wandering monsters doubtlessly lurked.

Thankfully the boarillas, or suidarian as the system called them, had not remained at the golf course. It seems the one that got away had warned them of our approach and they had all fled. We could see the distant remains of camp on one of the greens, no proper shelter or fire pits, but clear signs of stone napping and bones shattered for their marrow. Hopefully they would stay gone and wouldn't turn into a persistent problem in the area.

Nah, with my luck they'll be back with an army in the hundreds if not thousands inside a month. I grumbled.

I gave the water hazards a longing look as we continued north. While yesterday had been surprisingly mild for a summer's day, today was feeling much closer to a standard for a Texas summer. Bright, sunny, and hot; and I was currently made out of metal. Tungsten might have a laughably high melting point, but it still soaked up heat nearly as well as steel from what I was feeling. Which left me feeling very much like I was slithering through an oven set to slow roast.

The plant store was right there! Once I got there I could probably nap in the shade and let the others sift through the plants for stuff to take with us. Maybe we could get something to cook up those boarillas Rumi had slung over her wide back, I was still fairly hungry on top of everything else.

–Landmark Quest Available: Garden of Hunger–

–Reward: 120 Exp, Seeds of Plenty–

–Failure Penalty: Death–

I let out a long tired sigh, of course it couldn't be so easy. "I don't suppose that you three think you can clear this place on your own do you?"

"You okay Joe?" Rumi asked a bit worriedly, letting the dead monkeys off her back as Shaniqua removed her improvised saddle bags.

"The poor night's sleep and heat aren't playing well with me." I yawned. They didn't need to know the full extent of my exhaustion. It would just worry them. "Really feeling the need for a nap, but I can power through if you need it."

Shaniqua poked her head around the corner of the store and yelped as several pointed fist sized, bullet shaped, chunks of wood slammed dents into the chain link fence. She clutched a paw to her chest before looking confused and feeling around where her two torsos met, mouthing something I'm pretty sure was a confused oath before shaking her head. "This does seem like something better suited to your scales."

"Fine," I grumbled, "but you do realize you can't always count on me simply tanking things for you right?"

"All the more reason for us to take advantage of it now." she replied happily giving me four thumbs ups.

Poking my head up over the top of the store I tilted my head to let several more of those wooden bullets impact me, fairly close to my eyes. There seemed to be about a dozen man sized venus flytraps with thick barky hides firing their weaponized seeds about once every two second from a sphincter at the back of their maws. Mixed in among them appeared to be about six towering rag weed looking plants throwing off a thick yellow powder in a wide field. Right the flytraps probably only had limited ammo and would run out eventually. I was willing to bet the ragweed was throwing off something that generated status effects. If I chopped those down and let the flytraps deplete their ammo the others could probably handle the rest, yeah, seemed good enough for me.

Closing the eye facing the shop I slithered around the building and through the gap in the fence into the now completely wild and overgrown yard. It was such a shame, I thought, opening my eyes just enough to see the ragweed towers, I used to love coming here with my mom as a kid.

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

The place had been like a living maze of plants, statues, and benches mixed with windchimes and green houses in its heyday that could all be bought as you walked its manicured arrangements. Now it was like walking, well slithering, through a clearing in the woods. Still pretty, but lacking the love of the garden maze. Even the various metallic windchimes which would fill the place with a soothing musical murmur with every puff of wind had fallen silent, rusting in heaps under tangling ivies and thin trees.

Six swings of my tail and each of the ragweed towers fell, their field of pollen lingering before settling to the ground even as the flytraps continued to spit at me, one lunging to bite as I slithered past. It was barely more noticeable than raindrops against my armored hide so I was content to let them continue as I lowered my head to the open back of the store and began to slowly extend myself into the shop. I found myself feeling nearly crippled with nostalgia as I looked at various aged nick nacks, pots, bags of soil and fertilizer scattered about the now leaf covered tile floor. I absently took note of a few thermostats and barometers that still seemed to be working to note that it was almost ninety already as I curled up mostly inside the painfully familiar place.

It probably took me a couple minutes to even notice the plants had stopped firing at me, a quick wave of my tail provoked a couple shots and I brushed away the notice that my armored hide had leveled up. Guess the stupid plants had finally run dry or near enough.

Carefully unlocking the door, which was polite enough to have large protruding turn locks and handles for me to easily manipulate, I opened the front door to the others. "Looks like the plants are about spent, you should be able to handle the rest of them. I'll be in here cooling off, give me a shout if you need anything." They might have said something else as I let the old spring pull the door close, but I was already closing my eyes, taking long slow breaths.

Yet despite the wool filling my head, and weariness of my soul, my mind failed to still and continued to whirl even as I tried to catch a rare mid-day nap. How would my mother be doing right now? If she was a herbivore or a grazer, she'd doubtlessly be fine. Her little farm had plenty of grass along with her gardens and her ‘maybe someday’ orchard. I'd actually been looking forward to someday inheriting the farm, doing all I could to keep it in the family and making it something mom would be proud of.

Yet worry intruded, as it always did anytime I had a moment. If things were this bad in a cluster of cities including two of the largest in the nation, how bad would it be out there? She was a town and a half off the freeway, there had been wildlife issues before the Event. She'd probably be all alone, almost all of her neighbors only being weekenders. Would she have Dad at least? I could see him being excited for such an event with how many of those isekai stories he listened to, especially if he got his sight and hearing back.

The two of them wouldn't be enough. I had dozens and still felt like I was barely keeping our heads above water. They'd have to travel a whole day just to reach the nearest town, likely being attacked and harassed the whole way. The soft spoken once unbreakable woman made brittle by age wheezing in pain as a man past his prime did his best to hold back the swirling shadows and snapping fangs as the martial arts he'd spent so long training failed him in a body that was no longer his. Miles from hope and help. With me up here, wasting time nannying a bunch of random people I barely knew or cared about, most of whom didn't even want my help.

By the time I finally left these ruins behind and traveled the long road south, I’d only find their bones on the road. Cracked open for marrow and crushed under uncaring feet. I don't even recognize them, simply brushing past their final resting place in total ignorance towards an empty house. No longer a home as the only things of importance there were gone forever. Just two empty eggshells and me waiting there forever, alone. Living out the rest of my short life alone in the vain hope that they'd return. That another member of the family would arrive. But they'd all died too. Just me left. Alone. Forgotten. Unmourned. As I'd always known I would be.

I woke with a start as something hit my jaw hard enough to actually hurt.

"Joe," it was Rumi, looking a bit jittery, "We killed those plants but the quest won't end! They're already starting to regrow themselves!"

"Uproot them." I grunted flexing my jaw and feeling the fresh bruise, "If that doesn't work eat them. If that still doesn't work I’ll cut down the entire damn garden to see if that does it."

"Oh." Rumi blinked, "Duh, why didn't I think of that. Shaniqua! Saul! Try digging out their roots!"

I grunted, giving my body a shake and taking my measure. I felt slightly better, but as always the nightmare lingered like an oily heavy presence around my chest. I hated the damn things, they always seemed to sneak up on me. Made me forget they weren't real and I could easily escape them. They were so damn convincing!

As always in the wake of a nightmare, I went through what I remembered with impromptu logic and circumspect rational, lied to myself in order to ward off the lies and worries of the night. Sometimes I could almost make myself believe the lies. This time was harder and I settled for the many reasons my parents likely hadn't made it into the first wave. Because everything else felt far too likely this time.

I wanted to abandon these strangers to start sprinting south to the family farm, just to prove to myself that this was not one of my near singularly rare dreams that actually came true after a fashion. It had only happened the once, but it had made my nightmares all the more viscerally terrifying since.

I couldn't though. I'd already sworn myself to them for three days so they would have me for those three days unless they did something to seriously breach my trust. I'd always tried to be a man of my word, so there'd be at least something decent about me, and in a time like now that was a very valuable trait to have. So I was stuck, watching three people pull up roots and trying to help people I'd literally never met until yesterday get something halfway resembling a functioning society.

The bubbling resentment I felt was likely just a result of my poor mood from the migraine and nightmare.