Chrysalis

Chapter 973: Tree Thinking

The Mother Tree had a name. At least, she’d had a name. The memory was there, vague and distant, tucked in the recesses of her mind. She could recall that she’d had feet, and hands, and eaten food, though such memories were so faint that she couldn’t really recall what it was like.

She’d done it, certainly, but how it had actually felt. That, she could no longer recall.

Birth, or rebirth, on Pangera, now that she could recall. The cold and heartless System welcome, followed by her awakening as a brand new life-form.

A plant-type monster. The sense of horror she’d felt was visceral, though now it was hard to relate to the person she’d been in that moment. Back then, the memories of being human, of being Rose, had been fresh. Trapped in a sightless, limbless form had been a nightmare. She hadn’t even had a mouth with which to scream.

Roots and leaves had seemed so foreign to her then, strange and useless. How attitudes shifted with the times. Were she offered a human body now, she would reject it out of hand. The plant was superior to the animal in every way. She’d just needed time to realise it.

[Rosa Spina.]

That had been her species. Perhaps a play on her name? Had that been enough to convince the System to reincarnate her as a plant? Or perhaps her work as a botanist had been the deciding factor.

Regardless, those early weeks had been difficult.

People often think of the animal kingdom as brutal and heartless. They see wolves fighting, or bears clashing, or snakes stealing eggs and young from heartbroken birds and think of how tragic it all is.

The Mother Tree knew better, as had Rose.

There are vines that will strangle trees to death over the course of decades. Every plant is locked in competition with its neighbours every second of every day in a battle that will last until one of them succeeds and one of them dies. Competition for sunlight, for water, for nutrients in the soil. Never ending.

Inside the Dungeon, that battle played out too. It was faster, but no less merciless.

Her roots had pushed into the wall, seeking what every plant-monster around her had been seeking: mana. The more she had, the faster she grew, the faster she grew, the better she could compete.

Fear had thrilled her little plant heart the first time she had touched another of her own kind, several days after her rebirth. There had never been any hope of cooperation between them, that wasn’t how things worked. That plant had probably been a sibling of hers, in a sense. They’d been spawned together at least.

Her first conscious act on Pangera had been to strangle that plant to death. Over a period of weeks, her roots had invaded, choking her neighbour out of the precious mana supply, which she stole for herself. As the monster withered and died, she had been quick to grow into the space made available, to claim it before anyone else could.

A lesson, an excellent one. She would repeat that action thousands of times over the decades.

Deep within her trunk, she felt her soul-space emanate with light. Could the massive tree smile, she might have in that moment. Her children were playing. As creatures of pure energy, they intermingled and conversed with each other using the language only those born of the same soul could understand. It warmed her cold, wooden heart.

As they felt her gaze fall upon them, the bruan'chii danced and waved, and her spirit waved back at them, sending them zipping around each other with glee.

So innocent, her children. Too pure for this world.

When she thought of how close she had come to losing them, she felt anger shake her branches. Even after all this time, even after all the strength and power she had accumulated, it still wasn’t enough. Without the intervention of the ants, she may have been crippled.

Even now, her roots, buried hundreds of kilometres beneath her trunk, writhed with fury at the thought.

That there would be someone who dared to engineer an entire species to target her weaknesses. She hadn’t encountered anything like it before. A million flowers across three strata hissed with frustration, but she soon settled herself.

The mana was rising.

Her tap-root already thrummed with power collected deep within the Dungeon, and soon, her entire root network would do the same. It would take time for her to recover the power she’d been forced to expend.

Regenerating after the assault five decades ago had been a long process, one that still wasn’t complete. When her strength had fully returned… she would ensure that those who had tried to steal away her children would get their just deserts.

Until then, she would be patient. In all of the Dungeon, with its long-lived races, immortal monsters and slumbering Ancients, there were few who could be more patient than a tree.