NOVEL NEXT Chapter Thirty Two
Ahhh I don’t know how to feel about this right now! So I was right that I was supposed to be eating humans, but for all the wrong reasons?! And I just look sexy because of genetics?! Ahhh mom, why couldn’t you have been some kind of very strong monster, or a kid, or- Wait no, not a kid, that would just make me feel guilty. Besides, not growing up forever would kind of suck if I ever decided to search for love in this lonely plant world of mine, and-
No! This isn’t the point!
I should be grateful that I finally found out the truth of my existence, no matter how shocking it is to me!
Come on, plant! Get it together!
While I was busy mentally wrestling with myself, the elf snuck me a few more looks. I guess eventually he couldn’t stand the question in his head anymore, and decided to speak up about it.
“Your wounds… I’m guessing this isn’t what you normally look like?”
Hmph. I tried to defensively cross my tendrils over myself to hide my tattered body behind them, but considering they were also in shreds… It didn’t accomplish very much.
=...No, I usually look much prettier than this!=
The elf nodded (as if he hadn’t just asked me a totally offensive question just now), and his face hardened seriously.
“Then I’m guessing you look like that because you ran into this area’s L’Lan’e’frea.”
Oh! How smart of him! Although I guess I already kinda figured he was smart, seeing how he’d already been teaching me so much.
=Yeah! That’s the jerk who messed me up!=
“I see…”
The elf’s eyes closed for a moment, before looking back towards me with an intense stare.
“...And do you know what happened to it?”
=Huh?=
I cocked my ‘head’ to the side, a totally human movement that I somehow still do all the time, even though nodding and shaking my head somehow got forgotten. What, did he think I got messed up by that other plant and just ran away or something? Heck no! I’m a strong scary corpse plant with pride on my side! There’s no way I’d lose!
=I killed him of course! I’d be totally dead otherwise, I mean look at me.=
My elfy companion stopped, staring down at the ground. He’d been holding his stomach this whole time, but now it seemed like he was holding it just a biiit tighter.
“I… I see…”
Um… Did I say something wrong? Did the hot injured elf not like that I killed the L’Lan’e’frea or whatever? Elves probably like nature, so maybe he didn’t like that the plants fought each other in the first place? Aw, but I wasn’t even the one who started it anyways! Why do I have to be the one to get in trouble?!
=...Did I do something bad?=
The elf laced his eyebrows together and looked at me, but soon he shook his head and his face relaxed, and he continued walking.
“No. You did what you had to do to survive. It’s just that I find it funny how the world comes together sometimes.”
~~~
We walked awkwardly for another few minutes without me knowing what to say, before we finally made it to the ‘meat’ that the elf had been leading me to. And hey! You know what? He was right!
That sure is a heck of a lot of meat!
There was a huge slightly red corpse of some kind of monstery thing with a bunch of arms. It looked kind of like a newt or something? Maybe? But yeah, way too many arms, and almost every one of them had these demonic-looking sharp hands at the ends of them. Good thing it was already dead, or maybe I would have had to look at that grossness moving. Ick.
But still, who cares if it looks gross!
I’m practically starving over here!
I hurried my little root-legs of mine on over, practically blinded by the big hulking feast in front of me until I kicked something and almost fell over. Turns out I don’t have great balance right now, since my roots aren’t at 100%. I looked down annoyed at whatever it was that was impeding my eating, but then I felt kind of sad. I would have even frowned, if my ‘face’ was capable of it.
There were a bunch of singed elf corpses littered around the place.
No wonder the elf behind me stopped moving.
…At least he doesn’t look mad at me for accidentally kicking his comrades.
You know, it’s also probably a pretty good thing that none of these elves look tasty, just like him (although their physiques leave much to be desired, for me personally), or else we’d probably be in a really awkward situation right about now. I mean, there’s a huge hulking monster over there that’ll probably satiate me well enough, but… I was never one to waste possible food. There is a bunch of blood around the place though, and I can kind of feel it tingling against my roots…
Luckily for me, the still living elf behind me started to move, which snapped me out of my gluttonous thoughts. He strolled past me, towards the monster’s corpse, and picked up something shiny that was laying on the ground nearby it. It took me a little moment to realize that the interestingly shaped bit of metal was supposed to be a sword.
Okay, I’m starting to feel like I might be a little dumb, but I’m going to blame it on being hungry and hurt.
No wonder he knew where this big recently killed monster was.
And no wonder there’s all these elf corpses here!
He was hurt so badly because he was fighting this monster!
I know he totally came out of it half dead, but considering all these dead elves ringing the place, it’s seriously impressive that he made it out of that fight alive. Good job, elf! You’re at the top of my badass elf list right now! Right at the top! Although that's not saying much, since you're the only live elf I've seen so far...
Ah, yup, getting distracted again. My tummy’s rumbling like it means it, so I really should start getting to work. It’s gonna be hard trying to pull off some pieces of this thing with most of my tentacles wrecked like this… Plus it’s been about a day since this thing died, so it’s probably gotten a bit hard right now…
…I don’t think he’ll notice too much if I just… sink my roots in next to the monster and suck up some of this bloody soil, right? Just sneakily get a bit of my strength back first? I mean, waste not want not, and we both need this to happen to help us survive… right?
I feel like a dog sneakily stealing food from its owner, haha.
Gives the meal I’m about to eat a little sense of excitement!
~~~
So yeah yeah, yadda yadda yadda, I soaked up the blood and I tugged off the limbs. Turns out truly big things like this monster are actually super hard to dismantle! But at least there were a bunch of discarded swords and sharp stuff around the place from the fight, so I was able to use some tools to help me out. I kind of had to use them with a whipping motion instead of a regular cutting one, but hey, if it works it’s not stupid! Took a long time, though, long enough that the injured elf behind me even had enough time to drag all the other elf’s bodies together in one spot, despite the wound in his stomach bugging him the whole time. I would have totally been worried about him making his injuries worse, if I wasn’t about to heal him up anyways.
The whole ‘eating’ thing got a heck of a lot easier once I had some nutrients in my body though, and the blood I was soaking up helped me patch up the hole in my stomach quickly enough that I could eat without having to worry about spilling anything out, which definitely helped. After that, healing up my tentacles wasn’t too far off, and with 10 tendrils holding blades, it was easy-peazy to carve up the monster meat then! And by the time I could feel the elf watching my work with his confused eyes, I was finally healed up enough that I could heal him up, too!
Maybe I should have put down the blades before I started running over to him, though.
But that small shriek and flinch he did at first was totally worth it to hear!
Anyways yeah, I healed him up with a few drops of my dew from my lilies, and all was fine with the world. He looked absolutely mystified while he watched it happen, too, which would have made me do a big smug grin if I had the ability to. Look at how amazing my flowers are! I’m the best plant around, and don’t you forget it!
I also got to watch him do something amazing by the way! After he was all healed up and his strength had returned, he used some spirit magic! His sword glowed, and he plunged it into the ground, and there were all these little lights, and and and- Honestly I’m not sure what all that did, but the ground opened up and swallowed all the elf bodies, so I’m thinking it worked! And he looked really cool doing it! Like really cool! Like smack a picture of him doing that on the wall, cool!
And then he just… tried to walk away?
Like, it was almost comical how he didn’t even say anything and tried to sneakily leave, really.
But I didn’t let him, though!
Let’s just reeeeel this fish on back…
I think this one’s a keeper!
_____
AN: Hey, I feel like this is happening too often lately, but I'm gonna have to adjust my release schedule for a while, going from every 3 days to every 4. I've just been failing a bit lately at life, and I need to slow some things down a bit until I can get my shit together. But after that I'll be going back to every 3 days like before, promise!