Chapter 95: Decision and Consequences... plant form!

When the disaster first broke out around the world, the world governments knew that it wasn't possible to protect everyone. The scale of the beast tides eruption was simply too grand, like unstoppable tsunami. For this reason, all the armies around the world chose to defend only few key cities, and gather the survivors there.

These cities became heavily guarded centers; they became the site where the humans were going to make their final stand, facing the beasts with their last outburst of strength.

However, as the time went on, the awaited confrontation never happened. The beasts that were so powerful that not even the modern military might could stand up to them, never attacked the cities!

The humans however never rested, they started fortifying their cities, and accumulating strength. Their superiority on the planet, which they had taken to be granted, was no more. So now, aside from each other, there was new enemy to build up strength for.

Even though the beasts never attacked on a large scale again, however, aside from the cities, the rest of world was no longer the humans' territory, but the beasts' playground.

As the time went on, the disaster started changing the world. New animals, beasts, plants, even bacteria and viruses started appearing, morphing the peaceful environment into a one that was exceedingly hostile and endlessly competitive.

The new environment was so potent that not even the horrifyingly destructive effect of the atomic bombs that the human's had used against the beasts was able to influence.

The radiation were completely absorbed and cleansed, not long afterward.

What was worse; was that the pace of the change was not showing any signs of slowing down at all. It was continuous, with constant growing hostile environment.

Anyway, with the cities separated from each other with such dangerous environments, the structure of the human society itself started changing on multiple levels, political, economical, social, and others.

For instants, politically wise, the dangerous environment made it very hard to impossible to connect the cities to each other, in most cases… Hence, the concept of central government became very difficult concept to apply, almost obsolete. Thus, the cities in the world started managing themselves, establishing their own domains.

As for the economical changes, it was caused the same reason. The difficulty of transporting goods between cities forced them to depend on the surrounding environment to sustain their inhabitants' basic needs.

Anyway, and luckily, the humans weren't completely helpless in this new changing world. They had magic, and life energy, to compete in this new hostile world.

At first, they had only the artifacts to apply the wondrous and mystical powers of magic, however, with time; magicians started feverously studying and exploring this new aspect of this world. Warriors did the same with life energy.

These two new paths gave birth to individual with immense power, a one that enabled them to compete with the beasts head on.

Magicians no longer depended on the artifacts, but started researching and creating new spells, by using the artifacts inscribed spells as foundation.

On the warrior's side, they started coming up with special techniques to use their life energy, and even started creating techniques that imitated the magicians' spell effects.

As such, the humans didn't lag behind too much. After absorbing the shock of the disaster, the humans started playing to their strength – high adaptive abilities, struggling to keep their footing in this new savage world.

The time went on, and the environment was constantly adapting itself to the introduction of the new life forms, assimilating them in. this in turn led to a massive change in the world, as the humans knew it.

Before the dust of the disaster settles, a prehistoric-like dense forest crept on the land, engulfing almost everything on its way, subjugating it to its cruel environment.

After only few years, almost the entire land mass of the world was covered with this dense, jungle. This in turn created the perfect environment for the beasts to thrive in, and an everlasting nightmare for the humans.

The scale of this forest was beyond grand, and so was the type of life that thrived in. Even though this forest was relatively new, however, it gave off a sense on ancientness, as if it has been there for millennia. The trees were so exaggerated in scale that they rose up to heights of tenths of meters, and sometimes more. They formed a canopy so thick that it could even isolate the land, denying it the grace of daylight, and turning many places on earth a permanent night lands. This led in turn to the prosperity of many frightening night lurking beasts, and plant life forms.

To humans, this forest was a death zone, while for the weird types of animals, beasts, plants, and other creatures… a heaven.

Inside the massive forest, in a certain area, there was a small pond of muddy water.

Beside the pond, there was a football-sized rock. Hiding behind it, was small furry creature.

The creature was greedily eyeing a strange flower beside the pond.

The flower, which rested on the ground, was flat with abnormal black colored petals. Emitting strange formless power, it looked very mysterious, and appealing. This was the reason why this small mouse-like beasts so interested in eating it. He could feel that if he was to consume it, he'd gain a lot of befits.

Slowly sneaking toward the flower, the small beast was very cautious.

After getting to a certain distance closer to the flower, and as if stepping into some sort of invisible barrier around it, the small beast suddenly fell under the pressure of a formless power, directly assaulting his soul.

Before the beast could even react and flee the scene, the mysterious power assaulted at him in no time. Without being given any chance to escape, the beast gave a sudden jolt, before falling to the ground, completely motionless.

The wind blew, and the flowers black petals fluttered a bit.

In this savage environment, the flower rested in peace. The top predators in the area knew better than to approach it, only the small creatures were stupid enough to do so.

Around the flower, almost no living thing could be seen. Anything that had designs on it had already went into a strange trance, lying on the ground till death. The rest of the 'wise' creatures had already fled away, not daring to approach the area.

It was as if there was a strange domain around the flower, where anything approaches it suffers the mysterious attack.

Under the ground, attached to the flower, was two meter long, spindle shaped plant. The upper part of the plant, where the flower was attached, and the lower part of the plant where the roots were projected, were both tapered. The middle area of the plant was as plump, and as thick as an average man's torso.

Inside the plump middle, was a dark-green, fist-sized, gem-like orb! The orb was swimming within a thick textured liquid. Around the orb, was a bracelet, with gems embedded in it. The bracelet was projecting an energy barrier around the orb, as if protecting it from something.

Pu-thump!

Pu-thump!

Pu-thump!

Once every a while, a throbbing heartbeat-like faint tremor would be emitted from the orb, accompanied with a faint glow of light.

Pu-thump!

Pu-thump!

Pu-thump!

The orb was releasing the tremors and the glow at a very slow interval, persistently.

Inside the orb, a very weak consciousness awakened.

'Who… am… I…?'

The consciousness questioned.

Afterward, the consciousness went dormant; as if it had spent all of its power just to conjure this thought. And the thumping pace degreased.

The tremors' interval time increased to one very few days.

Months went by, one after another, during which, the beating pace increased back again to once every minute. Then, the consciousness was awakened again, still very weak.

'Who… am… I…?' the consciousness formulated the same thought again. It was as if the consciousness was so fragile, that it couldn't afford to even form a memory. Hence, it could only create this thought.

Next, it went dormant again, and the beating pace degreased once more.

Months and even years went by. And the savage cycle repeated itself.

The consciousness required months to gather the energy needed to awaken itself, and question its identity… however… that was it. The consciousness afterward wouldn't have the spare energy to even memorize the thought, and goes dormant again.

Even despite the bracelet's force field that was protecting the orb, the surrounding liquid was imposing a formless pressure at the orb, preventing it from gathering enough energy to permanently awaken the consciousness, all the while, trying to preach the force field and engulf the orb.

Years went on, and the vicious cycle repeated itself.

…