Adopted Soldier

Alex who lost consciousness was finally waking up. He still felt a bit tired and groggy as he slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed upon waking up was that he was holding onto Rachel and Evangeline's hands. He then slowly remembered what happened before he lost consciousness. Alex quickly stood up and checked the surrounding area, Alex was surprised in what he saw. 

Everyone was still unconscious on the floor, and they were still inside the Shadow Mercenaries base. The surprising part was that the base was now covered with vines, and the walls of the base looked like they aged centuries. 

Alex started scanning the area and looking at the walls more closely. No matter how he looked at it, everything looked like they turned ancient. Alex couldn't go far in this situation since he still needed to protect the bodies of his friends until they woke up. He tried waking them up forcefully but nothing seems to work. It was a good thing that their heart rates and breathing were all normal, else Alex would've thought they were dead. 

After a few more minutes of waiting, Emily was the first to wake up among the others. When she woke up she looked around confused, then she spotted Alex, and then she saw the others laying down on the ground unconscious. The memories of how she fainted came back to her and as she saw the vines covering the base, and noticed how the walls of the base looked ancient, Emily suddenly got excited. No longer able to contain herself, Emily suddenly screamed surprising Alex. 

"Did it finally happen?! Was I finally able to transport into another world?! Or is it possible was I sent into the future?! Have we slept for hundreds of years, and retained our bodies, and when we woke up we came into a post-apocalyptic world?! Either way, I'm cool with it! SO AWESOME!" 

Emily even in such a situation, instead of being confused and scared, she was actually happy and excited. She then approached Alex and started barraging him with questions.

"How long have you been awake? Has it been a hundred years? Have we become immortals? Did you protect us for so long? Or did we get transported into another world, and you just came back after going on a hunt? Tell me everything you know!" 

Emily was so excited she was practically drooling at this point. Alex was as usual overwhelmed by her passion. 

"I haven't done any real recon yet. I just woke up a few minutes before you." 

"What the?! Then should I go, should I go?!" Emily was getting even more excited as she wanted to sprint outside and see what was happening.

"I don't really think that's a good idea. We don't know what happened after that event. We aren't even sure if it's safe outside. So I think we all should go outside together... Also don't you feel that as well, that slight pain in your lower abdomen." 

Emily who heard what Alex said, finally noticed that there was indeed an irritating feeling coming from her lower abdomen. Due to them having an extreme amount of pain tolerance if they don't actually try to feel it they wouldn't even notice it. 

"What is this? Were we hurt while we were asleep? Also, how did you know that my lower abdomen was hurting as well?" Hearing Emily's question Alex tilted his head in confusion and answered.

"When I woke up, after scanning the area the next course of action was to check the situation of my body. From there I found out about the pain in my lower abdomen. After a short while you woke up, and as you were moving around I noticed that your body was bending a bit lower than usual. Even if you don't notice the pain, it's still there and your body was reacting to it. That's how I know that you're experiencing the same pain as I... Isn't that supposed to be obvious?" 

Seeing Alex looked genuinely confused made Emily facepalm. "Of course, I shouldn't be surprised since it's you." 

"Huh, what do you mean?" Emily didn't bother answering Alex anymore, as the others were now waking up as well. Oliver was the next one to wake up, followed by Niel and Sayaka, then Rachel, then Evangeline and finally Kei. 

Oliver almost had the exact same reaction as Emily when he woke up. The two of them then started to excitedly talk about their predicament. They began giving out different theories, most of them being things that they read in light novels and saw in anime. 

"Now that we're all awake, I want to ask, does everyone have the same pain in their lower abdomens?" Alex questioned in which everyone responded with a yes. 

"That's rather worrying, we could check the clinic inside the base to see if the equipment is still working. With those, we could see what's exactly happening inside our bodies." The others simply followed Alex's lead as they tried to head to the clinic of the base.

...

As the group was moving inside the base, they noticed that the vines were getting thicker as they headed deeper into the base. Seeing as the clinic was near Richter's office, they needed to walk for quite a bit. As they moved forward, the group noticed something weird, the dead bodies that were all over the place were no longer there instead there were only vines left in their place. 

Each one of them felt a little bit uncomfortable as they had so many questions but no one was there to answer them. When the group was finally near the clinic they noticed that the inner garden area where the Shadow Mercenaries kept their plants was where the vines seem to be the thickest. 

The group was curious enough to want to know what the source of the vines was and cautiously headed towards the inner garden. As they got closer they could hear the sound of someone munching. When they were about to reach the area, they suddenly heard Kei and Emily screaming. 

The group turned around to see what was happening and saw a vine had grasped Kei's legs and was pulling him towards the inner garden. Emily, on the other hand, was trying her hardest to pull Kei away from danger. Oliver who was the nearest to them pulled out his sword and cut the vines. Once he was released from the vines, Kei took some distance and became even warier of the vines. 

"What the hell was that?!" As Kei shouted that, the door to the inner garden started to crack, and from there a large looking plant came out. The vines that were all around started to enclose on the group, as they saw the true face of the plant that came out from the inner garden. It had a vague shape of something that had four legs. The supposed legs seem to be made out of thick vines, the head area which the group designated as such seeing as it had something shaped like a mouth, looked to be sprouting mushrooms. While the part that looked like a mouth had teeth made out of wood. 

What made the main body of the creature were numerous other plants, but the group also noticed that there were human heads inside the body of the creature. The moment they saw this creature everyone took out their weapons and tried escaping from the vines as they started shooting. 

"Did we really get transported into another world?!" Even in such a situation Emily excitedly screamed.