Chương 16: 15: Invasive Growth

Dozens of flailing tendrils struck again and again, the smallest thinner than my little finger, the largest thicker than my wrist. Snaps echoed in the gloom of the overgrown ground floor, at least some of the animated plants breaking the sound barrier like whips. If it hadn't been for all those points spent on increasing Might I'd already be dead. As it was, they hurt less like being hit by baseball bats and more like leather belts swung around by someone that didn't really know what they were doing.

No contest with the real deal individually, they more than made up for it in volume. The tendrils were less like the ropes I'd initially assumed and more like palm tree leaves and branches; angular, sharp, wiry and sometimes even barbed. Where my badly torn suit still covered it absorbed the worst of the damage, and its toughness being equal to mine meant it had grown tough enough to no longer be easily torn.

Being thin and flexible unlike real armor, it didn't stop the bleed-through impact of each hit from piling up the bruises and without Force Adjustment applying directly it would not last forever but it was still vastly better than the alternative. One of the thicker plants struck over my gut repeatedly, sending waves of stomach-turning nausea through me with every blow even as its thorns cut through skin like a cat's claws.

Smaller, sharper branches at my lower back gave me dozens of oversized paper cuts, while those at my arms and legs threatened dislocations. I pulled with my augmented strength, trying to get free, and got a whack that flattened my nose and brought tears to my eyes. Then a harder rap against the side of my left knee sent me screaming as something gave with a loud crunch. My nose reformed even as several bleeding cuts sewed up and renewed strength trickled into my whole body.

Pulling harder than I ever had before I heard tendrils snapping one after another and the vise-like hold against my right wrist and forearm loosened, restoring blood flow to numb fingers. A good repeat effort and it would have gotten free but a solid blow against my solar plexus exploded all the air out of my lungs and most of the fight out of me for a few seconds.

The damn plants kept attacking while I tried to catch my breath, which wasn't helped at all by each subsequent blow to my broken knee sending lances of agony up my leg. Something else snapped next to my right shoulder and more agony radiated from what was probably a broken clavicle. For a second or two my vision swam, what little I could see of the room breaking up into jumbled images that made little sense. Then bit by bit the agony retreated and my thoughts cleared.

With another crunch my knee sorted itself out, bone fragments sliding like worms under skin to find their proper place. It was a thoroughly unpleasant sensation and mental image both, but if it would save me from repeated kneecapping I'd take it. Skin sliced by sharp tendrils, gouges by thumb-sized thorns, cracked ribs, they all healed up like a video of the plants kicking my ass had been put in reverse, aches and tears in muscles and ligaments were going away as if every second was an hour of rest.

Unfortunately for me, the attacks kept dealing more and more wounds faster than I could heal. Unfortunately for the mutant monster lettuce, the more wounded I became, the faster I healed. The more times my regeneration fixed the same thing, the easier and faster it got fixed. And the wounds themselves did not manage to put me down nearly as much as they should have.

Progressive Regeneration III: recover from harm at a base rate of a quarter pound of tissue per second, the faster the more hurt you are, the longer such harm lasts and the more you've been similarly hurt. Secondary injury effects such as blood loss, hydrostatic shock, frostbite, or heatstroke significantly reduced. Most critical injuries prioritized and you do not count as dead as long as there's any brain activity at all. Improving regeneration helped with surviving a killer plant ambush?

Who would have thunk it?... maybe the pain was making me loopy, because after a bazillion minutes of constant beatdown it was getting hard to think. Unfortunately, the pain itself was the one thing Regeneration did nothing about. Either it didn't count as "damage" or it was just given the lowest priority as non-critical, which made it harder and harder to focus on what I needed to do to escape.

It was a race between my slowly escalating recovery, the monstrous tendrils' unending barrage, and the crushing, grinding mental drain of the whole thing. It was a thousand times worse than pushing myself till I puked before some big performance, a hundred times worse than day after day of painful recovery exercises after the accident, dozens of times worse than... everything I'd been through before. Without the influence of those boosts in Ego the strain would have been too much.

As it was, fighting was like willingly holding an arm in a kettle of boiling water. Only the fear of the alternative kept me at it. xxxx xxxx After far too long of the back and forth between wounds and recovery, the beating unexpectedly slowed down. Panting and gasping for air, drenched in more blood than I probably had in my entire body and shaking from the exertion, I hung from the damn murder lettuce as it changed its approach.

Apparently, the damn plants were as fed up with our stalemate as I was because instead of further beatings they started wrapping themselves up my body, adding root after root, branch after branch into a layer of iron-hard yet flexible wraps that covered more and more of me. From calves to thighs, from wrists and elbows down to shoulders, then further up and down my torso, smaller tendrils going around my neck and head as they grew and tangled.

I shook, pulled, twisted around a bit, even yelled, everything to put up a losing, weakening struggle against being turned into a mummy. Losing because for one, I was still too beaten up and exhausted to tear myself out of their snare. For another, because the murder-lettuce had made a serious tactical error. Maybe having no eyes, it couldn't see in the dark any more than I could. Perhaps being an alien mutant plant monster it couldn't really understand humans, or things like exhaustion. It didn't matter.

What did was my regeneration not having to keep up with more and more wounds being inflicted. The cocoon of murder-roots began to squeeze as every cut, tear or gouge on my skin sealed up and the constant blood loss cut off. It had only tightened to the equivalent of jean pants and top a couple sizes too small when my dizziness went away as several liters of missing blood regrew in ten seconds. Even with the damn things trying to squeeze the air and life out of me I already felt stronger, less exhausted...

and then the regeneration got working on cracked bones, torn muscles, ligaments abused repeatedly to the limit. The equivalent of a suffocating corset might have made me pass out in fifteen minutes, then quickly killed me once I stopped struggling... but regeneration pushed me back into full health in less than five. And with full health and strength came the full effect of Proximakinesis. From weakly protesting captive I went to full-force pull with my all my powers in an instant.

As my flexing, twisting body worked the roots one way, Proximakinesis put just as much force into rotating me instead of trying to break me out. There were no roots or branches set to stop that movement and it tangled and twisted every killer lettuce holding on to me for one full rotation, then another, then a third. There was a bit of strain for a few seconds then all the roots tore at once.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [1/18 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Progressive Regeneration III Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [0/18 pts] Might 13, Agility 8, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 8, Luck 1 The enormous rush of energy at killing dozens of the damn things at once felt almost as good as the sweet, sweet return of freedom... and the opportunity of returning all the pain and suffering they'd inflicted on me with interest.

Obviously, the attribute point was added immediately to Might and even more health and vitality rushed through me. The sensation, even the physical impact was different than all my prior physical improvements... mainly because there was little if any such change on the outside. Instead of size or definition there was a certain added weight and hardness.

Oh, everything was still as flexible and supple as normal, but just slapping a nearby root out of the air revealed a momentary, split-second difference in inertia and rigidity. It made my limbs, my whole body, feel like I was wearing metal armor, or rather like my skin, muscle and bones behaved a little closer to metal than flesh. It was slightly uncomfortable and I was certain the only reason I hadn't noticed the new sensation the moment my Might exceeded ten points was my increased Ego score.

Recovering from the devastating damage, new tendrils lashed out from all directions, demanding quick reactions to avoid getting ensnared again. Ugh, I'd look into how higher attributes changed me later. Now it was payback time. The huge ball of pulsing plant-flesh on top of the small mountain of decomposing corpses had obviously benefited from my killing off its root-like minions; it was pulsing faster and oozing an incredibly foul pus-like resin even as its tendrils grew in thickness and length.

Just as obviously, it hadn't enjoyed my killing the roots; it was rapidly, almost violently sweeping the surrounding air with its improved limbs for yours truly. Did it need them for gathering nutrients or sunlight like a normal plant? Were they its kids? Symbiotic organisms? Tools for ensnaring passersby? I had no idea, but if it wanted them safe then I wanted them dead.

I flew back out of its immediate reach, destroyed a few of the much weaker roots and branches trying to attack me, then grabbed the tangled layer over the floor and tore for all I was worth. Let's see if severing it from the rest of the network killed anything important.

Further trickles of kill-energy were followed with more and more frantic attempts to ensnare me as before, except this time I was stronger, my regeneration knew how to heal any damage quickly, and the damn plants didn't have the advantage of total surprise. I eagerly uprooted, severed, crushed or tore my way in a circle around the core, until something decidedly un-plant-like tackled me against the wall. An arm snaked around my bare waist and the contact burned like a bad sunburn even as it slid as if greased.

I knew that sensation but instead of wondering where one of the flayed freaks had come from I elbowed it hard even as Proximakinesis forced its arm open. It fell back, giving me time to rip the few roots that had tried to tie me to the wall as well as blast its caustic ooze off my skin. Regeneration restored the mild damage from the caustic sludge almost instantly and I turned around. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The form flitting through tendrils and shadows was not what I'd expected. Half-glimpsed in the near-darkness was not the crimson skinless monster but a grey-white corpse with both skin and clothes still, that must have once been a student. I moved to cave its face in but it was fast; as fast as I'd have been without Forced Acceleration.

Unfortunately, my speed advantage was almost completely eaten up by roots and tendrils trying to snare, trip or otherwise hinder me every step of the way and even the height advantage of flight could not be relied on with enemies literally striking out from the ceiling. Still, it was just one foe and a few seconds later I was tearing its head off its shoulders.

Up close, the corpse was overgrown with more of the man-eating plants, smaller roots growing into its flesh and pumping out greenish-white sap from every wound. Fuck! Naturally, that was when two more dead, plant-infested people attacked me from behind. They gripped at a leg each with both arms and with my boots and most of my leggings destroyed earlier, my costume did not protect from their corrosive touch.

Fortunately, having grown a lot tougher meant also being resistant to corrosion so it was more "painful red rash" than molten skin. I kicked out and the dead man - I couldn't see well enough in the dark to recognize which of the teachers he had been - flew loose. The former girl though hugged my leg to her chest and didn't let go.

The smaller monster was not enough to hurt me with punches and kicks but it was too dead to feel pain and by the time I'd crushed its head and gotten loose my leg was a mess like someone had taken a clothes iron to it. Fortunately the agony went away in seconds as soon as the corrosive was no longer in contact, a little faster than the previous time I'd healed from it. When the Hell had mindless monsters started using tactics? I got my answer as soon as I saw what the killer plant core was doing.

While I'd been trying to tear its minions from it, it had been busy infesting its pile of corpses with roots. Even as I watched one of its leg-thick tentacles pierced into a corpse's guts and a network of roots grew over and through the dead flesh as if it were soil. Then the dead student rose to its feet very much like a puppet on strings to join the three others already made while I'd been destroying the first two.

As the four of them advanced, the pulsing core extended more tentacles into the dozens upon dozens of corpses beneath it. This was going to take some time... xxxx xxxx One of the bulkier plant-corpses so far actually deflected a jab at its head in the latest of a series of warnings things had been getting worse for the past fifteen minutes. First had been the plant-zombies understanding of what worked and what didn't and using rudimentary tactics based on it.

Then came their moves slowly smoothing out until they no longer shambled and moved more like humans. Dodging away from a worryingly accurate punch from a plant-zombie with a foot-long spike growing from its knuckles, I latched on the one sneaking on my back and spent the couple seconds it took to decapitate it. The rush of energy pushing me closer to another power-up was paid for with a stab in my back from the spike-wielder. That had been warning number three; not just tactics but actual weapons.

And both their cooperation and threat improved. Good news; I'd managed to whittle the plants' stockpile of corpses by over twenty and even with their improvement after every death they were still about a third as strong or fast as I was. Bad news, new zombies were activating faster than I could kill them and I currently had to content with a dozen at once. It was not a matter of strength; I could crush any one of them with ease.

I simply couldn't do it quickly enough to avoid the interfering tendrils from both ground and ceiling, to avoid the other zombies trying to dogpile me and still cause lethal damage to the walking dead without taking risks. The thorn-wielder made to stab me in the eye while three others bracketed me from behind. With nowhere to dodge I just flew out of reach. Instead of trying to attack, the plant-zombies took several steps back and formed a wall between me and the core.

A simple tactic, but effective; even as I walked one of their recent losses was replaced. Trying to wait them out meant having to face more of them... except the energy coursing through me was approaching another milestone. Smiling for the first time since the ambush, I launched myself at the ceiling and started tearing the tendrils there.

I might not be able to stop their numbers increasing and attacking the plant core with more enemies at my back was a bad idea, but neither were they able to prevent me from growing stronger. Flying further down the corridor until I was nearly a hundred feet away, I started tearing every tendril in the area with abandon. Given the near-total darkness it was more flailing around than an actual fight, but the smaller, weaker roots could no longer stop me by themselves.

Finally, the constant minor kills burst into another power-up. Attributes [1/19 pts] Might 13, Agility 8, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 8, Luck 1 Might or Agility? My current strength was more than enough to dish out damage or endure it long enough to kill them; it was their numbers I was having issues with. Plus one point would have a bigger relative impact on an Agility of eight than a Might of thirteen so that's where I put it.

Unlike Might who'd exceeded ten, increasing Agility still brought small physical changes. My body was streamlined, a tiny bit of muscle definition smoothed out and everything felt lighter and limber. I was a hair more comfortable in my skin, faster to act and react and the rigidity from increasing Might above human limits was reduced. My balance became even better and the slight discomfort of flight I hadn't even known I'd felt eased.

It wasn't quite like being born to fly like a bird but at least now I could see where there was a difference, where I had to improve still for flight to come as easily and effortlessly as walking. Better prepared to handle the plant-zombies now, I flew back into battle. Only one more corpse had been perverted, infested with roots and turned into a monster, none of them showed new weapons or mutations. Good.

A sudden dive-bombing at the right end of their formation caught the smallest plant-zombie's shoulders under my feet. Instead of kicking out I kept diving, momentum and Proximakinesis toppling my target and crushing its upper arms under me. I still didn't stop, kneeling and punching it in the face in a single motion while pumping the full power of Proximakinesis in a narrow band across my knuckles. Its head was crushed like an egg struck by a rock.

Its fellows tried to surround me but I kicked out, somersaulting over the one going for my back, grabbing it by the arms and throwing it at the nearest wall. A burst of flight and my fist slammed into its throat, crushing it and cracking the wall behind despite the layer of mutated roots. The thorn-wielder made the mistake of catching me ahead of its fellows. I grabbed it by its thorn-arm and twisted, the snap of bones reverberating through my grip.

It wasn't the crippling move it would have been against a living person but it hadn't been meant as one. Instead I dragged the disarmed monster with me as I flew, gritting my teeth and ignoring the burn from the prolonged contact. As soon as we got far enough from the others I slew it with a few punches and kicks to the head and just like that the second strongest plant-zombie was gone. Time to finish this.

The roots growing once more from both floor and ceiling were too slow to block my path, those in my way torn by my passage. Fist aimed at the biggest enemy, I charged in. Then instead of getting its face caved in, my target sidestepped, grabbed my wrist and redirected me into the ground. What? First deflecting a punch earlier and now a throw? I was about to rise and tear the thing apart when it kicked me in the temple hard enough that its toes were ground to paste and thoroughly rattled my skull. That......

I blinked, shook my head, tried to find which way was up. The hit had been way stronger than I'd expected. Maybe half my strength, not less than a third like it'd had before. Two plant-zombies pulled at my arms, more at my legs but I wrested free... taking more effort than it should have. Taking just long enough for the bulkier enemy to punch me in the throat. I gagged, reflexively raised my arms to cover myself even as Regeneration took care of the actual damage.

Then a swing to the solar plexus shattered the big zombie's fingers, painfully punched the breath out of my lungs and staggered me. The blows didn't hurt much. It was like a grown adult getting punched by a twelve year old, except the twelve year old actually knew how to fight. Hello? Mindless undead monsters? I should be on the other end of the skill equation! While I was trying to breathe and come to grips with the existence of ninja zombies, the big one caught my left arm and pulled it behind my back.

Then its fellow monsters piled up, taking grip of my other arm and both legs, two of them holding each of my limbs down. The burning immediately started, corrosive goop biting at skin as my regeneration kept up. I gritted my teeth and struggled to throw them off then another zombie wiggled its way into the dogpile and put its arms around my waist. From how it just held on and tried to touch as much skin as possible it was obvious this was deliberate.

I didn't realize how much of my suit had been ruined in the fight because my Regeneration was forced to spread out and deal with a lot of skin getting damaged. It could keep up - barely - settling into a very painful stalemate between "serious sunburn" and "moderate burns". It would eventually speed up, but while it was doing that merely dealing with the pain took all of my will.

Getting Proximakinesis to blast one of the zombies was very hard while I could barely think straight but I was slowly, very slowly getting the hang of it. It had been a trap, no ifs, ands or buts. The damn plant-zombies had underplayed their growth and skill, letting me think that I'd killed some of them too far for the kill-energy to transfer. Was the network of roots responsible? Did it matter that they were ultimately controlled by a single monster? No idea.

All I knew was that I'd been brought to this by monsters just because their appearing mindless had made me overconfident. Mindless things couldn't have tricked me. No, not just tricked me; they'd deliberately sacrificed one of their strongest too boost the group. Pushing with Proximakinesis, trying to take the whole group with me, didn't work. Roots that couldn't hold me alone wrapped up around the zombies' legs, anchoring them so that collectively they were too much to tear through.

Trying to blast them off one by one didn't work either; the lack of air, the exhaustion, the pain made it like trying to throw punches while drunk. What did work was flailing around with as narrow a band of force as I could, random strikes that occasionally sliced through tendrils or dead flesh. Every second or third blow their hold weakened just a little and finally I saw a way out. Then a plant-zombie's punch to the face drew my attention.

Regeneration fixed my nose slowly as I squinted to peer through the near-darkness. It had once been a girl, one that looked slightly familiar, but was now a dried-out husk with wiggling, worm-like roots burrowing through its flesh. It took a stance then kicked out at my jaw. I didn't quite see stars but did taste blood. In a few seconds it was fixed, the damage and pain gone as a zombie's fingers were lopped off by my random flailing. The trap was failing and the sad little zombie just stood there, looking at me.

Its eyes, no longer dead but glowing a sickly pale green, scanned up and down for a way to hurt me. I just laughed in its face. The thing that had once been a girl reached out for my front. In the darkness and against monsters it hadn't really mattered that the threads of my suit still clinging on were no longer decent; I hadn't even thought of it. So as a vise-like grip dug into and twisted my left tit I gasped in shock, surprise and rage.

The pain stunned me as Regeneration was spread even thinner, forced to deal solely with the acid as everything else slowly piled up. My knees went weak and Proximakinesis failed as I couldn't focus, couldn't think around the dual throb of pain that made everything else finally too much. I screamed. Darkness - true darkness, not the gloom of this corridor of nightmares - gnawed at the edges of my vision as something loomed closer ahead.

I felt the roots uncoiling, falling off one by one; an opportunity to escape but my limbs felt as heavy as lead and as weak as boiled noodles. I blinked tears off my eyes and the blurry thing taking up most my field of view became clear; a giant, pulsing mass of plant-flesh with thick tentacles that stabbed corpses and infested them with wiggling alien roots. Except they weren't reaching down towards the next corpse; they were unfolding towards me. Terror is a great motivation.

In that moment the exhaustion from long minutes of struggle my regeneration couldn't deal with did not matter. The agony of near half my skin burning and regrowing didn't matter. The invasion of personal space from a malicious foe was irrelevant. The knowledge that if nothing was done in the next few seconds I'd become just another shambling freak focused my mind through all the distractions for a single purpose.

Proximakinesis burst at full, hysteric strength, knocking most of the loosened zombies off me and dragging along the rest as I flew away. Still holding on, the others tried to claw, punch or bite, but failed to slow me down. Roots from the ceiling grasped futilely as I flew by too fast. Then the plant-zombies and I crashed into the outer wall. That shook off the hangers on. I, on the other hand, kept flying. Bursting through the layer of roots and masonry like a wrecking ball, I tumbled out into the mist.

Several impacts followed in quick succession; I was too out of it to keep count. I blindly rose into the mist higher, higher, higher until my panicked energy gave way to utter exhaustion and I blacked out...