Chapter 2142: Sunflower Monster Plant
Well, theoretically.
Taming monsters and Wild Roots never truly tempted her because she knew the risks and the problems they could cause were more than what they were worth.
In contrast, a plant with intelligence and the lack of innate bloodlust towards living sapient things was attractive to Althea.
If it could kill beasts but not actively attack humans or their allies, then wouldn’t it add to her fighting force?
She...might even be able to leave it outside Alterra to guard it whenever she was just within the walls.
The image was beautiful, but she had to make it a reality first.
So...how to tame something like this?
Of course, she wasn’t planning on doing it now. She still had a husband to look for, but her brain couldn’t help but think in the background.
It couldn’t be as simple as releasing wood energy or something. When she activated her abilities with wild plants before, she just seemed more delicious to them. She feared being targeted by this. Wild Roots were already troublesome, let alone Monster Roots.
She shook her head and reactivated her [Woodland Camouflage] skill. At the same time, she put the house back in the space, and she dashed in the direction she guessed her husband was.
To be honest, this was inefficient, but what could she do? She could only start by going back to the last clue she had of him, which was that large path created by a large monster.
If she needed to get a viewpoint, she had to go above the trees, so she would climb them often.
It was not practical to create an earth platform every time since the trees here were all very tall. A few platforms that would go above them would consume a lot of mana.
The caveat was that while there were no arboreal beasts here, there were a number of wild roots. Some were pines, and those cones they threw were quite annoying.
She went around and looked for the tallest tree in her path, jumping from trunk to trunk, branch to branch. It was dark from below, and the canopies were dense, so she could only tell which tree was taller than the others by judging whose trunks went beyond the canopies.
She rushed over there and climbed up, controlling the nearby ’normal’ vines to lift herself up quickly. The tall granite mountain was already beyond the horizon by this time, but she could still see the outline if she had the scope, so she at least had a direction.
Of course, they also had compasses built and calibrated to this planet’s magnetic fields. It was a fairly new product though, and she wasn’t sure whether it would be accurate in this place, since there seemed to be a lot of differences.
She rested on the branch for a while, taking this chance to rest and regain some energy while also looking through her scope to where her target location was.
She soon saw a wide path from a distance. While this could be a different one, it was rare. Its location matched her previous location, too, and she immediately decided to run there.
Unexpectedly, before she could jump down, her peripheral vision caught sight of something big and yellow.
It was that sunflower monster plant. At some point, it had also climbed up above the canopies, and its rays were facing her.
????
...
Althea unconsciously raised her hand as if in greeting.
The sunflower tilted its head a bit, the countless sunflower seeds on its face shimmering.
It’s kind of...cute?
One had to know that any one of those ’seeds’ looked like they could impale someone. Imagine the usual tear shape of a sunflower seed, except the edges were sharp and its shape a little more pointed.
It probably wasn’t as sharp as metal, but its damage was probably no joke.
Althea, after a short mental deliberation, decided to interact with it more.
Althea, while she knew it was a bit stupid, decided to take a risk this time. She always trusted her intuition. If it was one of those times where she was wrong, well, too bad; she’d just have to run before she could get injured.
To be safe, she made sure she had all her equipment on, and double-checked how many protection charms she still had on her. If these got damaged, she’d have to find the time to carve a few more.
After checking her own safety features, she stretched her arm and released some of her wood elements.
This was something she used to enhance plants and crops. This was also what the wild roots found delicious before, making them want to eat her whole.
Soon, an unfamiliar vine appeared and grabbed her hand. Unlike the first vine wild root she had encountered, this one did not have a single thorn. It really looked like the stalk of a sunflower, except instead of upright, it was as flexible as a snake.
It didn’t seem like it could elongate more than its max limit either, unlike those legitimate vine plants which could force growth and lengthening, increasing their bodies’ length to hundreds of meters long.
This ’vine’ was relatively smooth except for a sort of elongated texture on its surface. Even if it rubbed against her palm, it did not hurt at all.
Althea was very nervous. If something happened, her dagger in the other hand was ready to attack. Althea watched as the vine wrapped around her arm but didn’t do anything else.
If it were a wild root, it would’ve attacked by now, but this one had not, which emboldened Althea a little.
Instead of loosening up, she continued to ’feed’ it with her ability. She took it a step further and concentrated the wood energy a bit more. Althea, who could be said to have already mastered the wood element, found changing concentration and density was no problem.
As the aura enveloped the vines, the leaves growing out of it swung around, looking very comfortable. Althea studied it well, mostly for curiosity and her fascination with plants. However, she did not forget to figure out the most efficient way to go about this.
Concentrating so many elements in one body was an extremely mana-consuming task. It was also tasteless and useless for most, so not many bothered to learn the technique. To many, it was better to focus on learning or triggering skills and/or occupation.
She checked the concentration of wood energy they liked the most and where the return was the highest. After a certain threshold, the plants would just think it was all the same and get used to it. Even when courting plants, it seemed like one still had to do a lot of things.
Althea lifted her head and looked at the sunflower’s main body and saw that it was the same. From her angle, the sunflower and the vines looked somehow in sync with their movements, looking relaxed and sated.
Despite the thing in front of her being strong and deadly, she inexplicably found it cute.
"Do you want more?" she asked, wrapping her voice with aether. She doubted plants could understand her words, so she hoped to express it in some way.
As if to answer her question, the vine wrapped around her arm swayed a bit more, and she really did feed it. The movement was not too much, of course. She needed all her energy.
She let a continuous trickle out, the concentration becoming increasingly consistent. While not much, doing this for minutes totaled to a good amount of mana. For normal people around level 20, a good fraction would be gone, just like that. They certainly wouldn’t be able to sustain this kind of ’sharing’ for more than an hour.
If there was a bright side to this, the wood energy in the vicinity was so dense that she, with her abilities, recovered her wood elements at an abnormal rate. If she had the time, she could do this ’snack time’ session for a longer time.
She then abruptly stopped her supply. If it attacked her, then she’d run away. "If you want more, you have to follow what I want," she said. If it was volatile enough that it would attack her the moment the desired resource was consumed, then it was better not to have it.
Interestingly, while the sunflower did not understand, it remained peaceful next to her. They sat still for a while until a vine appeared and tried to wrap around her other arm.
She refused, and she abruptly lifted her arm to avoid it, but it was super persistent, even when she had already ’turned off’ the comfy wood elements.
Now, Althea wondered if it had to do with her scent. Since ’awakening,’ her body has also developed some changes. Rather, the old qualities had become more refined, and one of these was a comfortable aura possibly brought on by her diluted elven blood.
Maybe...she could use the monster plant to guide her to her husband. He, too, was a pseudo-elf after all.
She looked at the sunflower, wrapping aether in the sound waves she released. "Can you find someone with a similar aura to me?"
It wasn’t that it could understand language. It understood her intent and emotions more.
It lunged forward, and Althea jumped upwards. Unexpectedly, it leaned down a bit so its base was exposed. She landed right on top of it. It was surprisingly spacious.
It lunged forward, and Althea grabbed whatever she could. Before she knew it, the sunflower was expertly travelling across the top of canopies as if it were flat lands.
And Althea got a ride, just like this.