Chapter 2141: First Monster Plant

Of course, as thanks for their help, Althea also planted strawberries and berries on transplanted soil for them before leaving.

The location of the camp was pretty much just a giant rock, but it did have some soil on top, carried by the winds over centuries of existence.

Further, even if the plantable soil wasn’t deep enough, they could just move some from the outside and then place it in some of the depressions on the rock face. It was just like having giant pots or something.

Their greatest advantage in farming was that they were technically located in the Hollow Forest. The wood energy here was even denser than in the Feyun tribe area, and the wood energy was passively stronger than the wood energy emitted by a level 3 farm.

She left with the camouflage skill activated. She had already used the peak of the rocky tribe’s base to map out her path. Her scope was top-of-the-line in Alterra, and she could see details several kilometers away with it.

She couldn’t see the path the big monster made anymore because they got far and the plants around it had recovered a bit, but she had a decent sense of direction, so she knew the direction to go.

She had been sending messages to her husband every kilometer or so, but had not received a response. It was either he was too far away somehow, or that he was in trouble. Hopefully, he was just too busy to check his aether letters.

She rushed over and jumped from tree to tree, trunk to trunk like a ninja, avoiding all confrontations that she could. Even those she could win against, like small mobs that ended up inside, she would ignore them.

She was near the periphery now, so there were still a number of beasts roaming around, many of which, along the path she and the two orcs took, so it was safe to assume many of them got attracted by their scents, especially since the two had bled a lot during the battles with the wild roots.

Speaking of Baa the teenage goat and her brother Gus the deer, when she left the Rocky Tribe’s territory, they were still undergoing punishments.

How do adult orcs punish and discipline their children?

By losing a few meals, of course.

Losing one meal was equivalent to torturing them to death.

They had hardy skin and were not really afraid of pain, so physical punishments were useless. The way to hurt them was internally—through the stomach.

It wasn’t that they’d starve if they missed a meal or two, but orcs just loved to eat, so it was a very effective spiritual torture.

Later, after she left, a new punishment was added: No strawberries/blueberries/whatever treat was currently fruiting at the time.

Althea didn’t know this yet, though. At this time, she was focused on her current battles with random beasts and wild roots.

When they went after her every time her camouflage skill was off, she could hit them to deflect attacks, but her main goal was to go away. She could not afford to waste energy before she found her husband.

She also saw a lot of what should be wild plants. They were crawling or just swaying along...killing beasts. It wasn’t that the beasts were helpless and weak—because they weren’t. They usually come in groups, too, so in terms of force they should not lose against a typical wild root.

However, wild roots greatly outnumber them. Most importantly, they recover faster than beasts in the Hollow Forest. The dense wood energy truly allowed wild roots to go against meat beasts like they were sharks fighting against rabbits.

Who told them to enter enemy territory? Even if one plant would be bitten off its roots and ’made to bleed’ by their sharp fangs, there were other wild plants around with no less bloodlust than the one it defeated. It was endless.

There were actually quite a number of monsters there. Perhaps only the stronger ones developed stronger instincts to actively avoid this place, but there were definitely plenty of monsters around level 20 and below roaming around.

At least the wild roots had targets other than her, which definitely helped her out a lot. If she brought the orcs with her, they’d probably target them like ants to sugar on a rainy day.

She went as far as she could while her camouflage skill was activated, and then when her camouflage died when her mana was low, she would summon the portable house to hide in.

She sprayed out some of her cheaper beast-repelling potions through the small fenestrations. These could not entirely repel the beasts there (since the average beasts here were town-level), but it would at least mask her scent. Ideally, the monsters would also dislike the scent enough to reroute.

Rerouting meant they could attract the Wild Roots elsewhere. A small mob had been attracted by her scent before, and they had arrived just in time to face the Wild Roots going after her.

Those things were annoying as heck. Whenever something tried to crawl through the fenestration, she would cut them down. The fenestration was operable, but one vine managed to go through.

Fortunately, it was soon distracted by easier prey and did not try to enter again, giving Althea some time to repair the cover.

As for why she used the cheap ones, the high-level beast-repelling potions were limited in stock and should only be used for emergencies.

They were also cumbersome to formulate. Her current situation limited the quality of potions she could make. It would also take time, which was a luxury she didn’t have.

Meanwhile, the cheap ones had limited stocks too, but she could make them in the wild. She had plenty of materials and ingredients in her space. Now that she had a bigger space, she would only stockpile more.

She stayed there for a while. She ate a meal, looked at her phone because she missed her family, and then took a short nap.

Her nap was relatively comfortable, considering where she was, though she reckoned it had to do with the comforting wood elements around. It was like she was sleeping in a comfortable air-conditioned room for a while.

Her nap was cut when she heard loud roars from the side. It seemed close, though not that close, so she took out her scope to check things out. While most of her view was blocked by tree trunks, she did see the anomaly appearing through the gaps.

It was a big yellow flower thing moving around, killing several monsters on its own. It grabbed a monster with its flexible stems, and its large petals enclosed the body.

A few minutes later, nothing was there anymore.

Althea knew immediately what she was looking at.

A Monster Plant!

By this time, she could use her camouflage skill again, so she did. After hiding the house back in her space, she went to get a better view.

She did not go too close and remained more than a hundred meters away. But with the scope, it was easy to see the entire event.

The Monster Plant was like a giant sunflower thing with the classic yellow petals (though it had a bit of an extra gloss to it) around two to three stories tall when it was ’relaxed’.

By relaxed, she meant that its stem was lounging flexibly on the ground rather than the upright stalk she associated the sunflower with.

It was here that she saw the difference between the always-aggressive and bloodthirsty Wild Plant and the enigmatic Monster Plant.

It was difficult to put in words because they were so very similar. For one, both could attack beasts, though obviously with differing efficiencies, but when Althea used the [Eye], the difference became clear.

She could feel the dense cluster of energy inside this plant, like veins that passed through the plant’s ’limbs’.

The Wild plants simply had denser wood energy around them, with denser clusters near their cores or roots. The monster roots...really had a core, like a physical one.

The [Eye] could see how dense it was. It was like an aether crystal, except exclusively made of wood energy rather than unfiltered aether.

She wondered if monster plants were just the intelligent monsters of the plant world? However, she did not feel the same bloodlust and the same scent of blood as she did in some wild plants.

When something consumed an intelligent being, it would leave a mark on them. After all, the way aether was processed by humans, orcs, and other sapient things was different. It was like adding ink that could not be washed.

Althea had always been sensitive to these things. Of course, this just meant something had not yet consumed an intelligent being. It could be that they killed them but didn’t eat them, and it didn’t mean that it never would.

Althea knew Monster Plants were extremely rare so she took this chance to learn as much as she could about them.

She even saw how they processed energy, especially since it had just eaten (and was still eating). The monsters had dark energy into them—it was what triggered their creation. The meat they could eat was just formed as matter when they manifested in this world.

This bit of dark energy was consumed with gusto, then the wood energy around the plant temporarily looked a little bit richer.

Wild Roots had no such effect.

To summarize, it was similar to how plants absorbed carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen.

Seeing its well-behaved look as it ate a common enemy, Althea’s mind began to wander.

What if Monster Plants...can be tamed?