After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World

Chapter 2138: Monster Roots

Like any other tribe, the Rocky Tribe adopted the groupings model whenever they ventured out of the camp to hunt.

So...why would two teenage orcs go out in danger on their own?

It was definitely because of something stupid.

And this stupid thing was a dare.

To be fair, orcs generally didn’t have much vindictiveness in their bones, but competitiveness was still very much a thing. For example, they wouldn’t be able to think of schemes like poisoning their rivals, but they certainly could cause trouble for them in other ways.

For example, among the few teenagers, Baa and Gus rivaled a pair of cousins.

They went on to brag about how strong they were, and then ended up bragging about their ’future’ kills. The rivalry got so heated that, while the adults were busy with their own things, the two pairs headed outside to show off.

Whoever could bring the head of a stronger monster wins!

To summarize, it was very stupid.

It just so happened that the other pair was caught midway by a hunting group. The other pair—who were both injured, but fortunately alive—had just returned less than an hour prior, and it was only then that the adults, including the deer-goat sibling’s mother, found out about it.

On the other hand, the goat-deer sibling managed to run farther away. Fortunately, they returned just before their mother went insane looking for them.

It wasn’t to say that she wasn’t already half-insane—

BANG!

At this time, the deer-goat siblings were headbutted all over the place.

"Mamaaaaa! Baaaa!"

"Noo! OW! Stoppp!"

The two, as soon as they got their bearings, immediately rushed to Althea. "Mum! Mum! Thank our savior first!" they yelled, and this caused the mama-goat to finally stop her truck, er, tracks.

Mama-goat took a deep breath, looking menacingly at the two, as if she was ready to barrel at them again the moment they said the wrong thing. "Saved you from what?"

The two were scared but had no choice but to shiveringly be honest. "F-From a Wild root-ba!"

"A WILD ROOT!?" She screamed. "Y...You entered the forest?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!?!??!?!"

Excluding the aerial route, the only way in and out of their valley was a path that ended outside of the Hollow Forest. So, even if their place was technically within its scope, they didn’t actually have to pass through it.

But these brats, for whatever reason, actually entered—

"Not our fault! Really! We were outside!"

"There was the giant rock monster again! But this time, it was in a serious fight!" the goat yelled.

The deer bobbed his head. "It’s true! It’s super intense! Frozen water everywhere!!!"

"Frozen water?" Not only mama-goat, but also Althea, exclaimed this at the same time.

The two teenagers barely registered their reactions as they passionately recounted their story. The way they said it seemed like they were fighting for their survival. What if mama goat decided to pity them!?

"Many monsters were along with it, so we couldn’t go in any other direction."

"We were pushed inside the forest! Not our fault!"

The liability of this was the most important point to the giant monster that none of them could beat. It even ate quite a few of their people over the past few years!

By this time, many orcs were there to listen, sounding a little cynical. "Are you sure it’s the rock monster?"

"Of course! I’m not blind!"

"Yeah! It’s so big, how can we see it wrong?!"

The rock monster had been the nemesis of their tribe for many years. They had been taught how to avoid it since they were little. If it suddenly went berserk and rammed into them on its own, what could they do!?

"What can possibly trouble it so much?"

"It’s an orc. He can fight it! Escape its mouth!"

"He’s super powerful! I don’t know what he’s doing, but his attacks were odd but impactful!"

It was here that Althea finally spoke up. "Tell me everything you know about these...wild roots."

....

Because she wanted to know a lot, they gathered a lot of the orcs who knew about it.

The most prominent person was an old female elephant who seemed to be about a hundred years old. They gathered at the communal area of the valley, with many orcs just there to listen in.

What the goat-deer siblings were saying was all quite interesting, okay? Would there be a follow-up after this? And who is that odd-looking small orc? She’s so...hairless!

Not everyone was paying attention. For one, the younger generation was quite boisterous. There was a cheetah cub running around with a little horse foal, making hair and fur fly everywhere they passed. They were horsing around, literally. They were so annoying some adults threw them up to play elsewhere.

Anyway, Althea kindly gave away a few snacks like grapes and peanuts she grew in her now-larger space. The plants inside grew much faster now, perhaps because the environment had rich wood elements.

Wild roots had apparently existed far longer than the current living orcs were alive. They varied from vines, trees, and giant flowers. There were also spiky ones, mushy ones, and sticky ones.

Many of which an orc hadn’t ever seen before, but their tribe happened to have settled down so nearby, and throughout the years they would see sightings of them from a distance (there was a viewing area at the top of their rock formation that went past the average tree height in the hollow forest), and sometimes they’d encounter them when they accidentally entered the borders.

Fortunately, orcs travelling outside always went in teams. If those orcs who ventured in were alone, if their level wasn’t high enough, then it was estimated they wouldn’t have been able to go out.

The wild roots had only been found in the Hollow Forest before, and it seemed like leaving the place was disgusting to them. Until recently, this was a safety net that comforted them.

Which was why the fact that the plants went after them even outside the forest was so concerning.

Althea had her own guesses but never vocalized them. She simply gathered as much information as she could. Soon, not just the elephant, but many others started to share.

She also got them to call all orcs with information about wild roots, no matter how minor. If it was information she hadn’t heard before, she’d give them half a kilo of level 20 monster meat.

Fortunately, she had managed to expand her space lately, and she got hold of a lot of carcasses of beasts during fights.

Althea was soon surrounded by many orcs. In fact, many had been staring in curiosity. Orcs didn’t have much concept of etiquette rules like waiting for people to finish their business before bothering them, so even before Althea announced the meat reward, there were already people nearby and lining up.

Orcs could get emotional. When asked, their first answer (and what many of them ’submitted’ as information) was how annoying the plants got, the damage they caused them specifically, and so on.

This was indeed useful information, of course, but Althea had to take them with major pinches of salt because a lot of them were subjective. There might be exaggerations or misremembrances here and there. Orcs were not known for their impeccable memories.

However, orcs were unlikely to lie, so she knew all of what they said had some validity to it.

They were also extremely troublesome, and defeating them was thankless. At first, some smarter vegetable-loving orcs wanted to eat the remains of a dead wild root. Maybe, they thought, it would have the same effect as beast meat.

This made sense. What those plants ’alive’ were was due to them being powered by a condensed variant of wood element.

However, they found out that Orcs were simply not built for the elements; their innate physique had always been related to the body and the muscles, so monster meat had a much better effect on them.

She also found out that the orcs classified the monster-plants into three:

Aberrant Root, Wild Root, and the Monster Root.

Aberrant Roots were those with minor reflex movements. They moved, but they went with the flow more, and their movements had a lot to do with response and environment.

It was like the touch-me-not plant and wouldn’t attack. In Althea’s opinion, it was just a normal plant that had some unique attributes.

For this type, she reckoned the elusive Elysian plant was part of it. From the orcs, it was not the type to attack and just move around. If there was chaos or too much ground vibration was happening, it would move away, likely underneath the shrubs.

The second type was the Wild root, which was actively aggressive and was not rare in Hollow Forest. You didn’t have to go too deep to encounter one. Case in point, she had already encountered two.

They were not exactly sentient, but they actively looked for sustenance, which was, well, monsters and other living things. They moved and hunted based on their ’instinct’ or whatever it was called for plants.

They were, in a sense, no different from bloodthirsty beasts, just in a different form.

The final type was much more elusive, and most orcs had only heard of them: the Monster Plant. In the Rocky Tribe, only a handful had ever seen one, and they were consistent, so Althea knew they were real things.

Unsurprisingly, this was the most interesting for Althea.

Why? Because it was these so-called Monster Plants that seemed to have gained a bit of sentience.