Kingdom Of The Weak

Or rather, it found them.

"Plant…" Remian was actually asleep at the time, while Wushuang and Hou were on watch. In his dreams, he dreamed of green, and blood thirst, and nice, warm food nearby…

"WAKE UP!" Wushuang suddenly screamed, jolting everybody awake with the sheer alarm in her voice. "Attacked by Trapvine!"

That was a very concise alert, in Remian"s opinion. Wushuang was a rather good sentry, even without Psionic powers. The Man-Eating Trapvine had barely slipped a dozen tendrils of vine into the firelight. Remian had enough time to sit upright, look around, scramble to his feet and grab for some sort of weapon before a rush of tendrils started grabbing at people.

He first reached for his crossbow, but then thought better of it and grabbed a burning branch from the campfire as a torch. On impulse, he even grabbed the saucepan, still bearing small bits of roasted meat as snacks for those on watch.

Hou"s response was a bit slower than Wushuang"s. "Defensive formation! Guards to the front! Carriers to the second line! Girls, get behind us!"

Remian thought that directive was a good one, but Zhao Feng thought otherwise. [Does he think he"s in command of this camp?]

Big Li didn"t seem very impressed either. "Don"t order me around!"

Wushuang ignored him entirely, dodging vines as they stabbed at her like daggers, charging straight into the center of the vines, looking for its trunk. Zhao Feng and Big Li likewise went for the kill.

At least Little Li hung back, letting out a shrill shriek of her own. The guards and the baggage carriers also followed Hou"s instructions and set up a double layer of defense centered around her.

As for Remian, he stood right where he was, somewhere between the second line and Little Li. Roughly thirty vine tendrils were lashing out at the first line, and about a dozen grabbed at the second line. Only a few made it through to where Remian and Little Li were at.

Remian brandished the torch, greeting tendrils with fire from one hand, and using the saucepan as a sort of shield to block off another tendril on the other hand. He was soon back to back with Little Li, who was handling two more tendrils on her own.

They were managing all right, but the front line defenders were overwhelmed in moments. Tendrils wrapped around the arms and legs of the guards, making it difficult for them to move, sometimes holding them immobile entirely.

"Aaugh!" one of the immobilized guards was stabbed through the throat by an enterprising tendril sporting a dagger like thorn roughly the size of a finger.

"Hold the line!" Hou himself was in the second line and had wreathed his body in some sort of fire technique. He threw punches that let out spurts of flame, and was clearly the most effective defender on the second line while the baggage carriers were basically just wrestling with the vine tendrils.

Meanwhile, Wushuang, Big Li and Zhao Feng were trying to score direct hits on the vine"s trunk.

"Frost Edge!" Wushung sliced vines apart in a flurry, leaving them cut and frozen, with white frost spreading several feet up and down from every cut she made. This had a paralyzing effect on the vines.

"Ice Edge!" Big Li"s technique was similar, but while she managed to cut and freeze vines, her ice didn"t spread more than an inch from her cuts. The vines she struck were not at all paralyzed.

"Gale Slash!" Zhao Feng dodged vines and went straight for the kill, unleashing a wind-elemental slash that shot out from his blade, crossed twenty feet in an instant, and struck the vine"s main body. But the tendrils in the way were too many and too thick, and cutting through each reduced a portion of the slash"s power. By the time the Gale Slash hit the trunk, it scored a wound, but not a kill.

"Uwaaah!" Big Li, meanwhile, was grabbed by three different tendrils and was hauled right off her feet.

"Yueli!" Zhao Feng hesitated for a split second. [Should I help her? Or stay on target…?]

But a split second was all. [Forget it, if Yueli dies, this is all for nothing!]

"Gale Slash!" This one was aimed at the vines trapping Big Li. As they were sliced, Big Li dropped with a yelp and stumbled as she landed back on the ground.

"Uggaah!" one of the baggage carriers went down with three dagger-like vine thorns through his chest.

"Aargh!" that was one of the guards in front.

"We can"t hold them!" another guard yelped.

"Stand your ground!" Hou shouted fiercely. "Or I"ll burn you myself!"

Meanwhile, Wushung was nearing her target while Zhao Feng escorted Big Li back to safety.

That was all Remian managed to observe before a fifth vine reached the back row where he and Meili were back-to-back. This one happened to come in on his side.

"Oh, sc.r.a.p." Remian grimaced. Half-hopefully, half-desperately, he flung a half-gesture, and called softly, "Light?"

Nothing. Not even a little shimmery barrier. So much for his vaunted magic. Without mana, Remian was as useless in a fight as a baggage carrier.

Remian dodged a tendril stab, and almost got caught by another tendril. He hastily blocked, almost b.u.mping Little Li into a stumble. "Sorry!"

If only… if only he had a mana source, like a mana crystal! Or if he had some way to import mana from elsewhere, like the Black Ruins Chaos Magic…

Wait. Chaos Magic. That was mana sent through from world to world, right? In which case… doesn"t that mean…??

The tendrils came in for another grab-attempt.

"Light!" Remian whispered, more fiercely this time, more desperately, honing in on the feeling of fear and desperation, trying to trigger Soul Boost. "Light! Light!!"

Still, nothing. Remian dodged, blocked, tried to fend off the tendrils with the burning torch, but he found himself tiring rapidly.

One tendril got through his defenses and stabbed deeply into his shoulder. Pain burst out. "Aargh!"

[This can"t be it! Am I going to die here, after everything I"ve been through, to be killed by a PLANT?!]

Anger flared. Thought faded, leaving only pain, and fear, and desperation and a suddenly burning rage…

"Burn!" This time, Remian didn"t call for light. He called for fire.

And fire was already in his hand.

Something flared inside. Something flared outside. Between his heart and the flames in his hand, there was a Resonance. Power came through into his environment from somewhere, he didn"t know where, didn"t care.

But at his word, the fire on his torch flared up and leapt onto all three vine tendrils simultaneously.

With a hiss, the three tendrils fell back, all three of them having caught fire. They writhed on the ground, as if trying to put out the fire, then lashed at Remian some more, but the fire was spreading quickly, and the vines went suddenly still, and fell to the ground lifeless.

Remian stared. The vine itself had cut them off from several feet ahead before the fire spread any further. [That"s one smart vine.]

"Frost… Implosion!" Wushuang shouted, and there was a sudden chill in the air and a wind rushing towards her.

There was a shrill screech, and then, Zhao Feng"s roar. "Gale Slash!"

Abruptly, all the vines jerked, and then fell still, as lifeless as the ones abandoned earlier.

"Nice shot!" Big Li cheered.

"Wushuang did most of it. I just finished it off." Zhao Feng said, indifferently, poking at the fallen trunk carefully.

"Quick! Gather the sap!" Hou barked. "Guards, carriers, everyone gather the sap immediately! Every drop of it is valuable!"
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Remian left them to it, sitting down next to Little Li tiredly. "So this is it? These things are what we came to find?"

"Not exactly." Little Li grimaced. "We came looking for Vinetraps. Instead, we found a Trapvine."

"What"s the difference?" Remian scratched his head.

"We came looking for eggs, and met the mother instead." Little Li explained. "Vinetraps are little ones who can hardly move on their own. They"re only dangerous if you sleep near them, and then you"ll never wake up. But once they grow big enough, well…" she gestured wordlessly. "Not many of them reach this size, though."

"So we"re just unlucky?"

"Yes, and no. In a way, this is good." Little Li said. "This means that we"re near a bed of these vines, and we"ve already taken out the parent. What"s left is what we came for. We"re close."