Chapter 184: Followers of Plant-Flesh

Chapter 184: Followers of Plant-Flesh

I almost hissed with frustration as the bad-thing slipped away again, falling through once-solid stone with unsettling ease. I would have, if I had control over my own body. It was frustrating, to see victory slip away again.

Still, Needle - and a few other followers, too - lived this time; that was some victory, if not the true victory that I wanted. More importantly, I didnt think that it was over. Through Needles ears, I could hear the sound of stone fracturing again and again. Unlike the bad-things escape during my last false-life, it wasnt moving any further away.

It was staying in place, destroying stone beneath the surface. Maybe it was frustration, or rage, or something else. It didnt matter.

Either way, I knew it meant that the fight might not be over yet; it hadnt left.

Needle, however, did.

The injured Coreless turned back around and left, her still-healing legs locked into a limping stride, each new step forcing a hiss to burst from between gritted teeth. I went with her, helpless to do anything else. She didnt know that I was there, and there was no way to turn her back.

I sent another command to the nearby roots, urging them to continue guarding the nest in my absence. They wouldnt be as effective without my conscious direction, but there wasnt much else that I could do. That done, I threw my senses back towards my own body.

The change was as disorienting as ever. Touch came first, the feeling of fingers brushing against scale-flesh. Soon after, the scent-taste of the Cores lair flooded in, a combination of old blood and overwhelming plant-flesh that mingled together on my tongue. Sound and sight quickly followed.

...think something happened? Hes not moving at all. The-female-who-was-not-Needle hissed at the others in a series of mangled noises, visibly [worried] by my minds absence. I twitched, flexing my coiled scale-flesh where it lay across her arm, and she let out a breath tinged with [relief]. She must have picked me up at some point.

Looking around, I noticed that things seemed to mostly be the same. The Grateful One and Will had freed both The Unrepentant One and the-female-who-was-not-Needle from the control of the bad-things. Some things had changed, but that wasnt surprising; the timing wasnt exact. Before, The Unrepentant One had still been stripping the dead Coreless of her ore-flesh. That had already happened, and The Grateful One was almost entirely covered in stolen bits of flesh, with only a few remaining pieces left to take.

Ignoring the mental fatigue that always came with using my connection to a [Little Guardians Totem] so heavily, I quickly removed the spore-roots that were infecting Will. The Coreless following praise was appreciated but ignored. I had heard it before and, if I went too slowly, I knew that I might hear it again. With that in mind, I selflessly ignored the sounds of well-deserved praise, moving on to the next step.

Getting back to the [Little Guardians Focus].

The girls fine, The Unrepentant One grunted, the sounds wiping away Needles [HORROR] surprisingly quickly. Stayed back to clean things up.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle plucked me from the ground and clambered over the root that blocked the nest, slipping through one of the larger wall-cracks. The others followed behind, and it wasnt long before a host of Coreless had gathered around us. They jabbered at one another in the way that Coreless always did, the sounds occasionally drowned out by another deafening tremor. I had been ignoring most of it, but the most recent sound was different; it was one that I had been waiting for.

I slithered away to peek through one of the many wall-cracks that lined the nest, watching as a nearby tower-nest began to fall, shattered by plant-flesh marked by gold and blue. Others fell with it, tower-nest after tower-nest sacrificed in a bid to steal away what rested within - the innumerable plant-flesh followers of the Great Core, each carefully converted, and each far less carefully brought to the field of battle. Many died in the process, plant-flesh pulped by haste and sheer mass.

Others lived.

Clinging to the Darkwood Guardians roots, plant-flesh followers joined the field in great masses, the spore-roots inside them forcing roots and tendrils to anchor themselves as best they could. With so many cracks in the surface, the gathered plant-flesh quickly found the purchase that they needed.

At the same time, the ground trembled again, as if trying to remind me of the Ascended that still waited below. Despite my efforts, I knew that the plant-flesh that coated the ground was too weak; at best they would slow the bad-thing down when it tried to find stone.

I needed them to be stronger.

Larger.

More dangerous.

[Verdure Parasite] was more than enough to make up for what they lacked.

Plant-flesh bloomed, forced far past natural limits.

The battlefield was ready - and when the earth began to shake and tremble, and a massive shape broke through its surface with a roar like rumbling stone, I was too.