Chapter 2143: Reunion Deep in the Forest

A/N: New month guys! Time runs too fast darnit! Thank you thank you, everyone for supporting the story! August marks this story’s THIRD year! Wow. xD

As always, special thanks to the lovelies who comments, reviews, sends golden tickets, and gives gifts! HUGSSSS

Shout out to July 2026’s Top 3 GT Givers! Joshua_Dunbar, LavenWinkle, and DaoistKao2S~

...

After several hours, Garan had consumed a large amount of energy. His improvised defense area was currently surrounded by various plants, all trying to get a hold of him.

His hands now had two long daggers, cutting the vines and branches trying to approach him through the gaps of his metallic ’shield’. He looked like he was in a one-sided bird cage that was cold to touch.

It was unclear whether these plants felt pain, but the frozen ground around him definitely slowed them down. He did not have to worry about roots or attacks coming from underground, allowing himself to focus on more visible threats.

While the attacks weren’t particularly strong, doing this for hours still caused physical strain. Had the surroundings not been cold due to him, he might be drenched in sweat right now.

He let out another burst of cold air, causing the metals around him to freeze up, slowing down the monsters again.

He was especially annoyed because not too long ago, he had wanted to write an aether letter to his wife again, hoping to see whether she was close by or not after the message failed to send a few times before.

However, before he could send the latest message, the vines came at an opportune moment. He instinctively used his dagger to cut it off, but the letter was thrown out of his ’cage’. It was pushed farther away during the succeeding fights by the density of plants trying to go after him.

At this time, he didn’t know where exactly in this lump the aether letter currently was.

The struggle continued on for a while until a new vine shot up from above. This forest was quite dim because of the dense canopies, but this vine seemed to have come from above them, creating light wells from above.

This vine was obviously different from the others. It was much more vibrant and lush, exuding more energy than the others. It had some sort of light energy, in contrast to the morbid, eerie energy the vines from before gave off.

It emanated strength somehow, almost as if it had muscles.

It slapped the vines and branches that were targeting him.

Slap, slap, slap!

The new vine, for some reason, smacked the others around him.

Garan watched in confusion as the new vine grabbed and pulled them as if pulling on weeds. Within a couple of minutes, the plant mob was cleared out. Instead of being relieved, however, Garan was more apprehensive.

His guard went all the way up, prepared to go berserk against this new, unknown, and stronger enemy.

That was until the canopies opened up even more, showing a massive sunflower looking from above....and a very familiar person right above it.

The tension in Garan’s body deflated like a balloon. It was almost embarrassing.

However, Garan did not even notice the silliness. His azure eyes were hot, fixed on the figure smiling at him from above. "I came to see my husband in prison."

...

Garan unfurled his metallic cage and allowed the vine to take him up. While the sunflower slapped the enemies, the two embraced, lips meeting like magnets, and didn’t let go for a long time.

Althea wanted to watch the events below, and Garan hugged her from behind, burying his head on her shoulder.

While caressing his head, Althea watched the monster root—she named it "Sol" —slap what should be a dozen wild roots to death; she couldn’t help but think of a few things.

Monster roots could be controlled, but they were super rare. It was wild roots that were prevalent here. The world was fair and balanced, so it was naturally difficult for beings to go past certain thresholds.

She could ’control’ the monster root because it was sentient and could, to a degree, communicate. Wild roots were just like beasts, and their instinct was to consume.

But couldn’t (weaker) beasts be tamed by beast tamers? At least, in a way, puppets were controlled.

Beasts could be ’brainwashed’ to think the beastmasters (or taming tool users) were stronger monsters and would succumb to them.

Could wild roots succumb to monster roots?

She observed a bit more and saw that wherever Sol’s root slapped, the targeted wild root did seem to be in pain. She didn’t think wild roots had nerves; it was more like instinct to protect their parts. For example, when they ’bleed’ out fluids, they would be open to more damage, and they instinctively protect those parts.

There could indeed be some suppression effects.

Then, while the two were hugging, Sol finally finished them off.

Ratatatatata

They watched as Sol even shot an area like a machine gun, targeting an area covered by dense bushes and trees. Most of the vines and a branch started to curl away at this moment, and it wasn’t difficult to guess that Sol targeted the main body so they had to curl back to protect it.

They looked at Sol’s face, now lacking a few seeds.

"Is it regenerable?" Garan asked. Althea nodded.

"Should be."

With her husband and Sol guarding her, Althea could finally experiment a bit.

They grabbed the remaining wild root, pulling it to Althea. Garan was watching closely, ready to kill the plant the moment it touched his wife.

She applied her wood ability into its ’veins’, traveling to where the strongest force was. Wild plants didn’t seem like they had cores, but there was a dense amount of wood energy concentrated in certain points, which seemed to power the rest of the plant’s ’limbs’ and branches.

It worked a lot like a pre-programmed robot, except the program was to kill and consume.

That said, she wouldn’t be surprised if one day, it did evolve a core. Like, this dense wood power would congeal enough to become solid, in which case it could probably become a new type of monster.

Could Monster Plants start as wild roots? Possibly. If so, then did they get cleansed as their cores were formed?

Psychologically, she might accept this even if it were true. After all, even if they killed a lot of people as wild roots, they were not sentient at the time.

Then again, the Monster Roots’ cores could have condensed on their own. This place had super dense wood energy.

She did wonder if there was still a trigger or other conditions for them to form cores. If there were no trigger, there would’ve been more monster plants. However, in reality, they were so rare that even orcs living inside the hollow forest might never have seen one.

She tried to use her own power, perhaps control it somehow.

She watched as the vine paused its movements, but only for a second. Like a taut string, it pushed away her powers as if it were a virus to be expelled.

It was not a sentient thing, so it was more like the repelling effect between similar energies, like magnets. If she wanted to grab ahold of it, she might need to do something completely overpowering.

"Hmm..." she mumbled, thinking deeply.

Garan, who was now holding a few vines and branches, looked at her in concern. "What happened?"

"No, I am not strong enough," she said. "But...when I am, I think I can do it eventually."

It’s fairly interesting that she managed to control the sunflower monster plant first rather than the supposedly weaker wild roots. Was this the difference between brains and brainless?

At the same time, it also made sense. If one were to think of it, the monster plant was another entity that could become her partner. Wild roots were like limbs. She was only one person, so naturally, the number of limbs she could control would be limited.

She didn’t really want to control wild roots and was not as interested in them as she was in Sol. But...since she was going around this unknown place teeming with them, having the ability to make them less of a threat was invaluable.

If she were to make a guess, perhaps a milestone could be achieved when she landed level 30. Every ten levels was always a gain in something, it could be a jump in physique, ability, and so on.

Considering the aether crystals she had, it was only a matter of time before she reached that.

So, over the next few days, inside the makeshift house, the two rested and absorbed a crystal or two.

Most people would need weeks to do so. One, because absorbing a crystal would take a few days, and second, the body needed to adjust to it. The two of them could handle it every day.

It was just that they didn’t dare to absorb at the same time, and rightfully so, because the chaos outside was indeed intimidating.

By the end of it, Garan finally entered level 35, while Althea was slowly catching up and entered level 28.