Chapter 3: And Another One Down

He collapsed on the ground and covered his ears as the sound picked up. It sounded like an unholy combination of a fighter jet and a dying goat, played on the musical instrument of a piece of wood tearing in two. But ten times louder. After the noise finally petered out and Jax had recovered his sensibilities, he rose to his feet and surveyed the damage. All over the cave roots had torn themselves apart in their death throes, leaving pieces of hard plant flesh, slowly oozing thick sap. But it was nothing compared to what happened to the tree.

All the leaves had vanished, and the entire top half had rotted away. If not for it being underground and the putrid smell, he would almost think that it had been struck by a gigantic bolt of lightning. The entire thing was lit in a faintly purplish hue, courtesy of the glowing goop that now splattered the walls and took the place of the lighting from the leaves.

Jax looked around in awe of the destruction he had caused. The Carnivorous plant had towered at least a hundred meters high, and now its height had been halved. By him. As he started to break out of his dumbfounded and exhausted state, a glow encompassed him. He felt a rush of exhilaration, chasing away his exhaustion and filling him with energy.

As the glow faded he realized that all his injuries had been healed, including his eye! He took a bit of time to get used to the restored vision and work off some of the energy. As he moved through some sword forms, he felt like he was moving faster and smoother. The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. A Temporary Improvement! He started to explore the limits of his new boon.

As far as he could tell, the Improvement mostly improved his reactions and coordination to make all his movements smooth and effortless. He also believed it increased the strength of some muscles relating to speed, making it categorized as a Tutorial-level High-quality Reaction buff. He snorted as he thought about the classes that had forced the information about buffs down his throat. Why that stupidly huge chart was seen as necessary for his future as an Improver was utterly beyond him.

After exhaustively searching the cave, he decided that it was a dead end and he should probably go back.

As Jax left the cavern, wondered why his trial was so over the top compared to the norm. He definitely wasn’t the only orphan whose parents died horribly. In fact, he was great off in that regard. His adoptive family loved him and he could still live normally and happily, unlike many people who had suffered childhood trauma.

Really, the only thing he could think of would be that the thing that killed Mom and Dad had afflicted him with something like a Rotplague, similar to the one that prevented Mother and Father from having children of their own. But such a thing would have to be incredibly subtle to go unnoticed all this time. It just didn’t fit together.

He was broken out of his thoughts by the ground ahead changing from stony material back into hard-packed dirt. He was pretty sure that the first plant couldn’t reach him until he got back to where it stopped attacking the first time, but it never hurt to be careful.

After making his way back to the domain of the first carnivorous plant, Jax was a bit shocked at how easy it was to dodge the roots. He easily made his way through most of the obstacle, but had a realization midway through. The path guarded by the rat miniboss led away from the root monster. If he needed to kill everything in the ‘basement’ to get his drink, then he needed to find a way to the main body of his former tormentor and deliver some heartfelt vengeance. But the cavern most definitely had no passages to go through.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He frowned. Maybe if he cut all its roots, it might die of blood loss? Sap loss? Jax started making his way up and down the tunnel, slashing through any roots that attacked him. Attacking them seemed to get its attention, and he was suddenly facing almost twice as many roots as before, even as he disabled them constantly. On one of his passes by, he noticed a patch of wall that looked… looser. It was very obvious that there was a secret behind it now that he noticed the oddity.

When no more roots came up to attack him, he started to work on the loose wall. After some digging, a side passage almost as narrow as the main one was initially revealed itself behind the thin wall separating it from the main tunnel. As soon as he stepped into the newly revealed tunnel, new roots, faster and thicker, pushed through the walls and started attacking again. They were so thick that he had to stand back from the tunnel, parrying and severing the roots that mindlessly lashed out at him. Even with the boost to his speed, he was unable to progress down the passage with out cutting off most of the roots. Most of them continued attacking even with severed ends, and took several cuts to disable.

Without the Improvement from killing the other tree, he would be completely unable to make progress on this one. As he slowly made his way through the tunnel, he started to get worried. He had no way to guarantee that the monster wasn’t saving up a bunch of roots to surround him once he was too far in to retreat. he just had to rely on his fair and straightforward trial to not screw him over. As of the moment he wasn’t struggling with them, which was good because he was still a bit drained from the previous ordeal. The Small Heal had erased the side effects of spent adrenaline, but it didn’t effect all aspects of mental exhaustion.

After a quite intense and stressful but oddly therapeutic walk down the tunnel, Jax noticed the roots start to become more numerous. They already seemed to be attacking with their full strength and abandon, but there were just more of them. Hopefully, he was getting close to the main body. As he got deeper and deeper into the mosh pit of brown plant matter, Jax started to get into a rhythm. Fortunately, he remained vigilant enough to notice when roots started appearing behind him. In a frenzy born of desperation he fled back through the new roots, employing various acrobatic maneuvers that could be done in a cramped tunnel and dodging through their clutches with millimeters to spare.

Landing on his belly after a particularly ambitious maneuver, he quickly rose and turned to fend of the attacking roots. After he calmed down, he tested the roots and the limits of where and how they would appear. About twenty seconds after cutting any roots, new ones would sluggishly wriggle through the walls and begin attacking him. This would be a huge problem, if this didn’t only happen ahead of where he had retreated to. He could move back, even retreating all the way to the main passage, and they would not follow or regenerate closer to him. In the True realm this sort of thing would never happen, and he would be dead right now.

Shaking that thought from his mind, he looked towards the mess of roots attempting to slash at him and falling short. Was that… oh. He could see a glimmer of purple through the flailing roots. What he had to do was obvious. He was supposed to rush through the reappearing roots and kill the monster before they could kill him. “Well, I’ve come this far.” Jax sighed. “Can’t chicken out here.” Thinking of anything that could help with yet another terrifying dash of suicide, he came up blank. He just had to rush through and kill the damn thing. Simple.

Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the thick of the blender. His acrobatic abilities were put to the test as he fell into a trance of motion. Duck that root, shift to the side to avoid two more, lift his foot and fall forward into a roll, parry that one, get hit by one root, two roots, four roots. As he started to flag, he saw the purple glow up ahead. The glowing weak point was guarded by a cage of dead roots. But Jax didn’t exactly expect anything less from his sadistic trial. Stopping to cut away the cage reduced his mobility, and he started to take real blows as the roots crowded in. He pushed through the pain of bones breaking and organs screaming and shoved his sword arm through the hole he had made. For a dreadful moment, the gross sack held up to his stab.

Then the skin broke, and the screaming started, much louder in an enclosed space. The last thing he felt before drifting off to dreamless sleep was blood trickling down his ears.