“What about it?” Akari asked.
“Don’t jump or anything but get it out,” Danielle said, drawing her own wet sword from its scabbard. “I think something’s trying to sneak up on you. I’m not sure, it’s weird looking. Not a person,” she added.
Akari drew her own sword slowly, and picked up her knife in her off hand. Sadie pulled her bow off its clip under her quiver, scanning the area around the outcrop. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“It looks like a coil of rope,” Danielle said. “Behind Akari on her right.”
“Rope?” Sadie asked skeptically.
“That’s the shape of the mana source,” Danielle clarified. “But people just look like sort of oval blobs, and I don’t think our arms and legs show at all, so I don’t know what it’ll look like to the eye.”
Akari was slowly and carefully coming up to one knee, turning her back to the river as she did so that it wasn’t to the unknown mana source. Danielle and Sadie started walking slowly towards her, not sure what was going on. Heather moved further from shore but didn’t approach the rocks, lacking a weapon. The coil of the mana source also moved slowly, not quite directly at Akari – it seemed to be trying to get behind her again.
“Vines,” Akari said as they got closer.
“Vines?” Sadie repeated in confusion.
“That’s what I see,” Akari said. “Vines. Moving kind of slow, but still way too fast for a plant.”
“Good for cording or fiber or whatever?” Danielle asked, remembering that vines had been on Sadie’s wanted materials list on Saturday.
“Oh, yeah, maybe,” Akari said. “Uh, how much mana do you think they have, though?”
“Oh, um. More than a rabbit, actually,” Danielle said. “I think. If I was right about what mana sources were rabbits, this morning.”
“I’m not sure if it’s safe to mess with, then,” Akari said, reaching behind herself for something. “Let’s just get our stuff away from it and leave. I don’t think it’s fast enough to – “
Akari cut off because suddenly, the vines revealed a burst of speed, and whipped around her arm.
“AAH!” Akari yelled. “It’s got me!!”
“My rabbit!” Sadie added, as another strand lifted the skinned rabbit carcass from the rock near Akari’s ensnared hand.
“Oh NO you don’t!” Danielle yelled, and ran around the rock to slash down at the base of the coil of mana in her vision. “That’s our dinner!”
Akari swung wildly at the vines closer to her arm, Sadie leaped up onto the rock to flank the vine creature and rescue her hard-won meat, and Heather made Danielle proud by summoning her staff to her hand. She was armed - that was already one step better than she had managed in Room 1019!
Danielle slashed at the vine. She was close enough to see the plant itself through the light of her skill now, and could see that there was a central coil that was highlighted as the mana source, but several long whipping vines of varying thicknesses stretched above it and the top of some root structure below. She continued to aim at the base of the spiral her skill showed her, in hopes that it was some sort of core area, perhaps an important organ, that held the mana. She wasn’t sure what sort of thing it was – a vine-like animal? An animal-like vine? She slashed again, and the creature whipped one of its smaller vines at her.
Akari did something that made her mana source flash and flutter in Danielle’s peripheral vision, then swung at the vine again, a less wild cut this time. Sadie scored a hit on the vine with the rabbit in its coils, but didn’t manage to cut it off, as the vine swayed back with the force of the swing. Danielle hacked at the base again, gradually becoming aware that she was getting more swings in than the others. She couldn’t tell if she was doing much damage, though.
“Heather, get in here and blood this thing,” Danielle shouted, and activated Combat Medic. It was supposed to improve fighting skills, wasn’t it? The tier-2 Skill cost two points of mana instead of one, but if it helped her make the thing let go of Akari, Danielle wouldn’t regret the mana.
“You want me to try to stick that thing with a pin?!” Heather replied hysterically.
“No – just hit it! Club it with your staff, get your knife and cut off the tip of a tendril, anything! Get into the fight!” Danielle replied, taking another swing at the base.
Behind the glow of Sense Mana Source, the structure of the plant-thing suddenly came into focus for Danielle. She was trying to slice at a bulb, with root tendrils going down and a cluster of vines going up. The spiral of the vine’s mana source began down in the bulb, then erupted as a woody vine and coiled around like a wooden spring, with the greener and more mobile vines branching off from it every few inches and running up through the spiral before lashing out like tentacles above. Danielle had scored several cuts on the thick bulb, but they were shallow and didn’t seem to be immediately inconveniencing the creature. She paused for what felt to her like a long moment.
During that moment, Akari took advantage of the fact that the vine wrapped around her arm could be pulled taut and finally cut it all the way off. Sadie tried slicing at the vine with the meat at a different angle and shaved a peel of green fiber off the vine, which retaliated by hitting her in the head with the meat. Heather reluctantly inched a few steps closer.
Danielle wished she had her hatchet, but the plant-thing had a number of tendrils reaching around towards the bags; she decided to stick with her sword and aim better. Her next swing landed a chopping blow against the base of the woody spring, higher up than her other hits, closer to the parts that were actually moving. The small vine that had lashed at her before came again, but Danielle was able to get her sword in its way this time, and took off a small section as it accidentally tried to coil around the blade.
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Heather inched in towards the bags while Danielle took another swing at the base of the spring, and the vine drew back one of its longer tendrils to deal with her. Akari tried to stand, only to realize another vine was wrapping itself around her boot. She put her recently released right hand down to hold that vine against the rock, while Sadie likewise tried to grab the vine with the meat with her off hand. Both of them managed to get a grip on the foe as Danielle took a third swing.
The wood of the spring-vine was dense and hard; Danielle could only assume the System was giving the plant-thing Traits that protected the core parts of it – the bulb and the spring. It might be able to survive having a lot of its green vines pruned, but she was willing to bet that cutting off the spiraling trunk they all sprouted from would doom it, even if it didn’t die outright. She was making progress, but for all her blade was so much larger than the spring-vine, it was like chopping at a tree; each hit took out a chip, but it would take several more swings to get through.
Danielle chopped again, counting in her head – four now. The vines lashed at her, not to grab this time but to whip. It hurt, but not nearly enough to dissuade her. As she hit for the fifth time, Akari cut off half of the vine around her foot, and Sadie used her weight to throw the meat-thieving tendril to the rock and get both knees on it. Heather reached the bags, and noticed the tendrils coiling through them at stealth speed, in spite of the battle. She hesitated; trying to decide if she could get into her bag for her knife, Danielle thought.
Danielle kept playing lumberjack. Six hits. The vine lashed at her again, and this time it found a way to distract her – it almost got a vine around her neck, but she got her hand up in time, and it didn’t get a strangling grip. It was holding her left hand against her cheek, however, and wrapping around the back of her neck. Danielle knelt down for better stability, and swung at the long part of the vine binding her with her sword while also trying to get a grip on it with her left hand so the force couldn’t transfer back to her neck. She did hit, but the vine was able to bend enough not to split, and she jerked her own head forward as she missed her grab with her bound hand and failed to counteract her own blow.
Heather lifted her staff high in both hands, and brought it down like a jackhammer against a vine that was too close to solid rock. Her aim was good, and she pulped the vine between staff and stone. The previously slow-moving tendril whipped back away from her. Sadie cut at the vine she was dealing with, sawing between the two points she had pinned, and finally freeing her rabbit from the plant-like thief. Akari grabbed for another vine, low and close to the place where it was reaching up from behind the outcrop, and pulled it tight against her sword. Her gripping hand yanked one way, her sword hand slashed the other, and the vine parted.
Danielle got her sword around behind her and brought an awkward overhand slash down against the vine; it was too vertical for the plant-thing to writhe out of the way, and she managed to cut off the part that was wrapped around her. She yanked it away from her neck, and took another chop at the main stem – seven hits now. For the first time, the roots were moving noticeably, stirring the dirt; she thought it was trying to move toward the river – or Sadie, perhaps.
Heather swung her staff down again, trying for the last vine that was reaching around towards the bags, but narrowly missed – mostly because it was already retreating. Her attack drew Akari’s attention to it, however, and Akari managed to reach down and catch it, and cut off a good third of its length. Sadie stood up and looked around, trying to determine where she could best attack next; there were no vines immediately attacking her, but just as she was about to move, she spotted one snaking across the rock near her feet.
Danielle took a good look at her handiwork. She’d made a deep divot, perhaps a bit wider than it needed to be, but for all the plant-thing was rooted, it was moving, and fighting back; precision wasn’t an option. Still, it was at least halfway through. If it was a tree trunk, she’d be looking to control where it was going to fall by now. She chopped at it again – eight hits.
Sadie chopped at the vine near her feet; Akari knelt near the back side of the outcropping, trying to decide what to do next; Heather came around the rock and aimed a wild overhead swing of her staff at the bulb, smashing down along the side of the spring with a loud ratcheting sound and bouncing off the bulb itself. She yelled in frustration, but Danielle saw that she had bent the spring at the weak point of the divot, a few splinters splaying out at the corners where it was now bending more than it could properly handle.
Danielle shouted, “Yes!!” and hammered the spring again with a pommel strike. She didn’t hit at quite the angle she intended, but it hardly mattered; the hard and extra-durable wood was shaped like a spring, but ironically had none of the flexibility the shape suggested – not on that part of the plant. The second strike on the weakened stem snapped it off. The vines spasmed, one of them coincidentally whipping Danielle across the face again, and another one slapping Akari in the neck, but it was only the death throes of the creature; they went limp, and the sharp tingle of a mana burst washed over them. Danielle’s System started blinking with a minimized notification. She brought it up right away, wondering just how much mana the creature had had.
- > Mana burst detected. 160 mana has been added to your base level. Remaining cost to level, 1626 mana.
“I think I got the killing blow,” Danielle said, standing straight and tossing the vine clenched in her left hand onto the rock. “It gave me 160 mana. How about you guys?”
“I got 80,” Akari said.
“Me too. Also, we still have dinner. You’re welcome,” Sadie said. Akari huffed a chuckle at her, sounding slightly out of breath.
“I got 40,” Heather said.
“Good job, Heather,” Akari said. “You got in there and did what you could, and you got more mana from it than I did for the rabbit.”
“Yeah, that was, aheh, that thing had a lot more mana than either of the rabbits,” Danielle said. “Seriously, though, good job. You almost got the killing blow with that staff strike on the spiraly-bit here. If you had hit it a little squarer, you might’ve gotten it.”
“Are you OK?” Heather asked.
“Bruised up a little,” Danielle admitted, “But nothing that requires mana healing I don’t think. Maybe ask me again after a few hours of hiking, though.”
“Same,” Akari said.
“I’m fine,” Sadie said. “I’m going to go wash the dust off the rabbit, then hit it with a Purify Food.”
“A what?” Heather asked.
“With my Skill, Purify Food. I didn’t think of it Saturday, but if we’re going to be eating wild game, I should be using it on pretty much everything – and especially this, now that it’s been stolen by a whatever-that-was, dropped in the dirt, and washed in untreated water,” Sadie said. She picked up the red cats bag – the rabbit must have been sitting on or in it before the plant-thing attacked.
“OK, good call,” Danielle said. “Do you want us to butcher this thing for, uh, magical vines or whatever?”
“I guess?” Sadie said. “Yeah, actually. Yes. Thank you.”
“Looks like it might need a hatchet for that,” Akari said.
“Yeah, probably,” Danielle said, wiping her sword off in the grass. She looked around for her Decision Day satchel – it was obvious which one was hers, by reason of being the one that still looked mostly empty. Then she glanced up and realized Sadie was carrying the rabbit carcass to the river. Which made sense; she’d just said she was going to wash it off. Still, Danielle’s mana detection Skill had ended sometime during the fight – she wasn’t sure when, exactly, it had happened unnoticed sometime after she activated Combat Medic.
The problem was, now Danielle knew the vine-things existed, but didn’t know if there were any more in the area. “Sadie, wait!” she called, jogging after her. “Let me scan for more mana sources before you dangle that big tasty piece of bait over the water?”
“Oh – sure. Heh, good call, even,” Sadie said, echoing her own words back to her.
“We’ll start on the vine-monster!” Akari assured them, hefting her hatchet.
distant descendant of a mutant daffodil. The girls have no way to know that, though.
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