Chapter 46

Daniel opened his eyes, and it took him a moment to understand what was happening. He was being carried up the stairs.

“Run!” Rosica screamed at people ahead of them.

When he craned his next to see forward, he saw stragglers turn and flee in front of them. It was disorientating, especially as there was nothing behind them. Rosica ran like his weight was meaningless to her and from her description of her build that assumption might very well have been accurate.

They burst out onto floor eight, and Luke and the rest of their fighters were directly ahead of them. He recognised the stances they had taken and the hard glint in their eyes. They were ready to fight whatever they were running from. Rosica did not slow down and then he was past them and Rosica dumped him, not bothering to place him down. Luckily he was conscious and with an agility that he had never shown pre-event he landed and prevented a humiliating tumble.

“Open fire.” Luke bellowed.

Daniel leapt to his feet to look over the shoulders of the fighters filling the hallway. The purple vines he had seen downstairs were pouring out of the stairwell.

Exploding arrows hammered home. He saw Tamara sent a spurt of blue flames like a flamethrower at the thrashing vegetation. Leaves shriveled and vines blackened instantly. Ice and dark magic landed each of them, shredding flora, but the assault was like an ocean wave. A mass of material bubbled forward relentlessly even as the front layers died carried by the momentum behind them.

Daniel stood in shocked disbelief, watching the carnage. The vines withered and came towards them and he felt naked without his club. If he had it, then he could have leapt into the fight and been comfortable that when he swung in the weapon that it would cut through everything with almost perfect efficiency. With Blood Drinker he would be deadly, but weaponless he was best served, biding his time. If someone got caught, then he could jump into save them. The evidence in front of him allowed him to piece together what had happened. He felt like an idiot. While he had been fighting the creature mentally, it had struck out at him physically to do to his body what it was failing to do against his brain.

Rosica had saved him from that assault.

And now…

The first wave of vines hit the front row of tanks. It was a physical mass of vegetation rolling into mere humans.

He flinched away.

Large mass had rules of their own. It was like people being hit by a bus. There was no situation where correctly bracing resulted in the bus losing. There was only so much force a human adult could absorb, and what was coming exceeded that threshold.

The front line glowed with power.

Magic.

The physics he was used to did not apply and rather than being flung every which way, the heavy vines as a thick as a man slammed into shields and were stopped dead. Tamara’s flames were directed upwards and the vines attempting to overtake them on the ceiling were consumed by the blue hot heat. Almost like it had been discussed. Tamara and the other fire mage focused on the centre with ice on one side and dark on the other. In the same way the lower attack had halted, the vines advanced. The magic storm on the roof was equally effective.

Then the melee fighters swung their axes and swords. The spear users had retreated and were thrusting their weapons over the front lines to spear the vines out of the air. They were playing a defensive game, intercepting components of the enemy that were trying to come over the top and lash down on unprotected backs.

The fighters held, and the tsunami of plants was halted.

“Advance.” Luke ordered grimly and the tank line stepped forward and halted. Then the line behind rolled up. It comprised of melee fighters who added their slashing attacks to the weaker tank ones. About a meter stretch of plant matter was eviscerated.

“Again.” Luke said flatly.

The process repeated with the tanks stepping forward though now they walked upon the shredded remains of the monster’s massive attack.

Once more, the still living wall of components ahead of them was hacked to pieces. That let them do another step.

While that initial assault had been terrifying, and Daniel had felt like it was going to wash them away. It had been repealed and now the tone of battle had changed utterly. It was clean up duty like hacking through the amazon forest pre-event. The plant, while alive, might as well have been the helpless vegetation they were all useful.

There was minimal resistance.

His heart rate slowed down. The massive plant was weaker than feared. They were carving their way forward using steel and wood. The magic casters, while alert, were no longer attacking, clearly having concluded that it would be best to preserve their power in case there was another explosion of growth.

“Violent,” Daniel mumbled.

Rosica who had been ready to leap forward into the coal face rounded upon him. “What the hell did you do?” She spat.

“Nothing.” Daniel answered defensively.

She had mad, angry eyes. “It… I’ve never seen it react like that. What… It wasn’t nothing.”

“I felt out its strength.”

“Don’t do it again. You would have died without me.”

Daniel ignored her and watched the fight. The experienced fighters from his team armed with a mix of high quality wooden weapons and the lower quality metal versions from the octopod chest had advanced two-thirds of the way to the stairwell door.

“Hold.” Daniel called out, and everyone stopped. They were all disciplined enough to listen to orders.

Daniel’s emotions were swirling. The vigour of the physical reaction and growth of the plant was at odds with what he had felt when they had clashed mentally. He needed to understand the difference. Ignoring everyone else, he walked straight at the nearest tendril.

“No,” Rosica exclaimed when she realised what he intended.

She tried to follow him, but both Luke and Alex intercepted. Out of the corner of his eyes, Daniel saw her raise a fist as if to her fight and then sagged in defeat when neither Luke nor Alex flinched. The only change was a slight shift of their feet, which allow them to bring their shields up to block the blow.

“Don’t do it Daniel.” She begged. “You upset it earlier. We don’t want to upset it.”

He ignored her and prepared to seize the tendril. She may not have realised it yet, but when she had been hacking away below before Daniel had arrived the plant must have been luring her into a trap. It could have launched that overwhelming force at any time and given her reaction and how it had struck his defensive line, then her forces would have been overwhelmed. Instead of fighting against him and acting like you could pacify a bully let alone an alien carnivorous plant she should have been asking why the plant had not commenced an attack on her.

It didn’t matter if his attempt was dangerous or would provoke the plant they didn’t have a choice. Eventually, they would have to deal with the creature.

He reached out, wondering how it would respond. Yes, the first time it had reacted with physical fury and almost killed him, but his instincts when he had engaged it were that it was weak and the only reason it had launched that attack was because it had surprised him and it had already developed it as a counter to Rosica’s group.

Not this time.

Even if it could still counterattack, his warriors had shown they were more than up to the challenge of stopping the creature, so there was little risk.

With his fingers just centimetres from the plant, he prepared his mind and then seized the tendril. His consciousness launched outward. It spread and interacted with the diffuse enemy existence. Daniel went to work to drive back the enemy. He was an inevitable wave and as he rolled through the plant fibres, his mind burnt away the animal parts. His gut told him they were the source of the opposing intelligence. They were a disease a parasite that was taking over the plant and it did not belong and it had opposed and killed humans.

Progress was easy. The rapid growth that had allowed the monster to burst up an entire stairwell and then attack them ten metres down the hallway had weakened the plant-animal-hybrid’s internal structure. There was only a bit of the problematic animal parts to overcome and it was more like a hollow sponge. In some ways, even more responsive than the conduits he had built from scratch.

In moments he had swept down to the eight floor and when he reached that there were branches on either side. Daniel did not go down them, but he sent his will along the main pathways. He slaughter the animal components as he went. There was no mercy.

He forged forward. Halfway down the first corridor on seven the density of material changed abruptly. Rather than a jungle that filled all the space there was a single root that was there to conduct intent.

It did not help the plant.

Daniel went through it, destroying the bit he did not like and claiming the plant as he did. Then rushed up to where he had touched the vine.

It was incredible that it had expanded so far, or maybe not. It was not like he knew what was remarkable or ordinary in this world.

As he moved within the plant, he could sense the outside. The nature of the creature’s body changed once more. The vines were tougher and long thorns radiated out from them. This was probably where Rosica and her team had fought the creature. This is where they would have died if Daniel’s presence on the floor above had given her the excuse to stop the futile battle and evade the monster’s trap by circumstance. Daniel continued to push forward, converting as he went.

He felt his mana drop alarmingly.

With a gasp, he extracted his consciousness and was once more standing on floor nine now holding a tendril that had a lot more green to it than it had a moment before.

“I’ve beaten the plant back to level seven.”

“What do you mean, it’s still there?” William pointed.

“That’s mine now.” Daniel told them.

“You need to burn it before it spreads further,” Rosica insisted, stepping forward.

“No,” Luke said even as he intercepted her. “If Daniel says it’s safe. Then it is. Daniel, is it safe?”

“Yes,” Daniel said flatly.

“Are you out of mana?”

He shook his head. “No, but I figure there might be another surprise so I would maintain a good reserve.”

“You killed the plant on eight?” Rosica asked.

Daniel nodded, “Unfortunately, not fully. There’s some left, but it’s definitely separated from the main mind, which should make it less dangerous.”

“Did any of the people down there survive?”

“What?”

Rosica was counting. “I’m missing seven.”