Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 197
🕑 Added 2023-12-08 19:03:14 +0000 UTCAlice sensed change in the spiritual landscape. It was unlike anything she had felt since her ‘awakening’ in this place. A powerful spiritual impulse swept through the surroundings, briefly freezing the spiritual life.
The spiritual realm was nothing like the physical one. Though Alice didn’t have direct access to the physical realm, she could, sort of, experience it through Keynes. Before her awakening, Alice's existence was in between the spiritual and physical realm. Now she fully dwelled in the spiritual realm, which came with a host of benefits like self development or lessened systemic restriction. She couldn’t yet tell what an outcome of this change would be but she was confident her growth wouldn’t stop any time soon.
As the local fauna and flora unfroze and little spiritual creatures fled, her attention was snatched by an appearance of a powerful spiritual being that entered the spiritual realm. Normally, she’d flee as well not wishing to risk contact with an anomaly but she knew this one.
“Keynes,” she said with a smile. “Welcome to my world.”
Keynes’s spiritual forma was a mess of threads circulating around a wisp like a beacon. The wisp, Alice knew instinctively, represented Keynes’s spiritual core, which resided on a deeper level.
“Alice?”Keynes’s voice was distorted. “Where are you?”
So he wasn’t fully in the realm yet but he was close.
“Follow my voice.”
She spoke to him, slowly bringing him deeper into her realm. With each milestone a pulse of spiritual energy came out of Keynes’s core, which started to impact the spiritual landscape, reshaping it. The spiritual realm’s fabric was very delicate but extremely adaptable. As Keynes’s power was eroding it, new layers of fabric came into existence meeting his power with growing resistance.
This wasn’t ideal as the new landscape would be more resistant to change, which would also have the same impact on the physical realm, then it would start birthing more powerful creatures. That was going to be an issue. Predators existed here but they were a product of natural evolution not forced transformation. Without a counter-balance, they would bring much harm to the local landscape.
Unless I hunt them down, she mused.
“Alice,” Keynes’s voice was much stronger now, his presence almost fully inside the spiritual realm. “I’ve made it!”
***
Esme had spent every single point on the best offensive plants she could buy. It was a massive gamble but with Torvac’s failure she felt compelled to risk it. When her placement was revealed, she couldn't be happier. Having Sophia next to her was a godsend omen and she couldn’t wait to roll over her enemy.
Dustbringers plants which Esme had bought had a devastating ability to wither and turn the surroundings to ash. While most plants couldn’t survive in such a harsh environment dustbringers thrived in it, allowing them to multiply.
The only drawback of dustbringers was their shortlife, nonetheless, other dustbringers benefited from their death as it created an even more hostile environment.
As Esme’s dustbringers spread outside of her territory into the neutral terrain, their growth was suddenly slowed down. It didn’t stop them but the change in the pace gave Sophia a chance to react. The border of her territory populated up with plants like a wall.
Frustrated, Esme pushed all the energy her Towering Heart Flower possessed to stimulate growth of dustbringers further.
Their growth pace increased halfway through the neutral ground, withering everything around. The pushback of neutral plants was rapidly diminishing as the ground was turned into ash and their number was dwindling. It seemed that neutral plants drew strength from their presence.
Esme smiled watching as her territory expanded and became a wasteland to normal plants. Even if Syman decided to attack her he would find nothing but ash, though she didn’t think it would come to this. With Zephyr as neighbour, Syman would be focused on defence rather than expanding.
***
Edward watched content how his plan smoothly unfolded. Even to him the precision was a little terrifying but this was expected from someone like him. Lord Sovereign didn’t have patience for incompetence.
Esme’s overextension toward Sophia would lead to the latter overspending resources on defence and substantial derailment of her plans. Perfect.
The next step required Theodore to move against Zephyr the moment Zephyr attacked Syman.
That left Torvac, the duo and him. Torvac wasn’t worth his time, while the duo would have cost him too many points so he had left them to their own devices.
***
Kora’s sense merged completely with Towering Heart Flower. She had wondered deeply about this challenge and its mechanism. She had her worries and expectations and most of them appeared here like the lifeforce, a resource they could use to speed up growth of their plants. While it was a powerful tool, it had crucial restrictions, it was very limited. Spending it was a strategic decision.
And the moment the Father started the challenge, she made the first strategic decision and attacked Torvac, expending about 30% of lifeforce. On the surface, nothing happened as the plants they were using were called worm flowers and grew underground, creating a neural-like system of roots. They were quite good at masking their spiritual energy but Kora needed to be sure that Torvac would miss the assault, hence a decoy plant.
Infused sapphire mana leaf was an odd mana plant which produced very potent but short lasting mana. Its aura flooded the surroundings and many plants were drawn to its presence as they used mana to grow.
Kora allowed the majestic plant to benefit allies, enemies and neutral plants alike as its benefits were short-lived and wouldn’t make much difference in a few moments. Her worm flowers ignored infused sapphire mana leaf as they spread beneath the neutral territory. An additional drawback, which Kora saw as a massive advantage, was that worm flowers didn’t capture territory. They spread but the border of their territory remained unchanged.
Torvac failed to notice the unfolding doom until it was too late and his plants started dying. Worm flowers were a quite nasty type of flower. They grew stronger by devouring roots of other plants.
Distracted by a flood of mana, Torvac realised that something was very wrong. Kora smiled, sadly. She didn’t take pleasure in this but winning the competition was necessary. Torvac’s demise was only the first but crucial step.
Even before Torvac was defeated, she checked on Keynes. Whatever he was doing he was bringing chaos, which was funny considering his aura. But obviously, he wasn’t using his [Chaos Aura] as using their spells or Talents was not permitted. This had something to do with his spiritual energy and its resonance in the spiritual realm. But that was the extent to which Kora understood it.
On the other side of their territory was Edward who seemed… inert. Kora had placed several tiny plants on that side of their territory and their primary role was to alert her if the other contender did a sneaky move. So far there was nothing coming from his side.
Torvac expanded the rest of the lifeforce boosting general vitality and growth rate of the plants on his territory but the action was in vain, as this only provided more food for worm flowers. It didn’t mean the worm flowers were invincible because they weren’t but fighting them required specific countermeasures. Kora had noted several plants and soil types that were toxic to worm flowers but here everyone started with generic soil and no one seemed to even consider transplanting the soil at this stage.
Good. The less warning their opponents had the better. Kora and Keynes had prepared the highest quality soil they could afford, it would make their plants grow faster while their enemies’ plants would become sluggish near the nutrient dense environment.
***
The collective of guardians stood around the Grand Druid and watched the contenders. Today, their minds were linked and formed a hivemind by the Father. There was no longer a point keeping them separate from each other.
“To use precious lifeforce in such a barbaric manner. It’s preposterous,” the guardians said as one. “One would think that the Father’s gifts instilled some understanding in these humans.”
But there was clearly no understanding among the contenders. Either they missed the concept of the conflict or deliberately chose to ignore the proper methods. Even the one with the Trait of Shamanism was barely scratching the surface of the proper plant cultivation. It wasn’t a mindless overgrowth that led to destruction of others but was a symbiotic process of integration and cooperation.
The first one to fall was Torvac. He failed to notice the encroaching worm flowers, and when he finally realised his situation, he panicked, wasting all his lifeforce, dooming his garden in process.
Torvac’s failure stemmed from his lack of basic knowledge about plants.
Worm flower was an invasive species that left without attention depleted an ecosystem and turned it into a wasteland. Its primary source of food were rare nutrients but in their absence worm flowers would happily turn on the roots of other plants, killing them and sending the ecosystem into turmoil.
In nature, worm flowers would only grow in small patches surrounded by hostile plants or soil. Unleashing worm flowers here was disturbing but effective if they managed to defeat their opponents in a timely manner.
Unless, they had soil with correct nutrients prepared to contain worm flowers. If not, these plants would turn on their own and destroy it from inside out.
So, what could Torvac have done to stop the attack?
The guardians realised the harsh truth. Without deeper connection, Torvac couldn’t spot worm flowers in time and because their growth was artificially boosted by the lifeforce, the time window for reaction was slim.
Smart. They gave Torvac no chance here.
It was obviously the culmination of things as Torvac had never seemed to grasp the delicate intricacies of nature. When Kora’s and Keynes’s plants reached Torvac’s Towering Heart Flower, contender Torvac was officially out of the last challenge. His lifeforce (starting) was transferred to Kora and Keynes.
Then Kora did something the guardians didn’t expect from any contenders. She released connection with her Towering Heart Flower, approached slowly the ground where worm flowers were spread underground and started tearing them out of the ground.
She was quick about it before these invasive plants could react and realise toxic sludge; it was their defensive mechanism.
The guardians had mixed feelings about it. They weren’t bothered by harsh treatment, which was simply part of a natural process, something had to die so another could replace it, but the fact that she revealed this to other contenders.
The same tactic wouldn’t work twice.
“They should have modified worm flowers into less aggressive species,” the Grand Druid noted. “It would have slowed their attack but having a web of underground plants, which benefits the surface ecosystem, would have made them superior to other contenders.”
The guardians agreed with the Grand Druid’s assessment. Nature wasn’t static, it constantly adapted and changed.
This was where all but one contender failed. Only one of them came up with his own plants. Despite this, all guardians felt immediate disgust.
Zephyr’s Talent was an abomination giving him control of nature in a way that ran against their dogma. To the guardians, relationship with nature was communion, while Zephyr enslaved it.
His custom-made plants were an outcome of experimentation. Blood stalk was the first one he revealed. When placed in the ground, it immediately started to extract lifeforce from the nearby ecosystem. This was all the plant did. As blood stalk continued to suck the precious resource out of its own territory, plants decayed and vanished into nothingness. This was a terrible plant, capable of erasing nature. Its roots were thin but nimble, never submerged more than a centimetre or two.
Then he placed another plant, liquid death grass in the ground, which quickly formed a relationship with blood stalk, feeding on its growing lifeforce.
Liquid death grass produced airborne spores that would attach themselves to other plants. These spores would then release a strong acid that turned other plants into liquid, killing them in the process.
Liquid death grass existed only for one purpose. Destruction of what was sacred.
He must be stopped…
