LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter Forty four
I dumped the long forgotten Til that I was still holding onto the ground, and made my way back over to the pile of corpses. A particularly whole-looking orc body with only a few wounds on it was selected and set apart from the others by one of my tentacles, and after finding a clear-ish looking patch of skin on it, I gently plucked one of my fresh new mushrooms and placed it down onto the corpse.
Ah, yup, good! It totally attached itself like I thought it would!
Ignoring Til complaining at me back where I’d left him, I watched closely as the mushroom suddenly grew little squirming roots and implanted itself onto the orc’s carcass. It occasionally wiggled and pulsed, almost as if it were making little sucking motions, and I watched as the orc's body slowly started to lose its colors, graying and shriveling up as if the mushroom had sucked out its essence. It took around 20 minutes overall, but eventually the little mushroom quivered as if it were giving one last good pull, and then it began to shine, as if indicating to me that it was ready.
So of course I popped it off of the orc corpse and tossed it right into my mouth!
For the record, I had a small internal debate with myself about how the heck I was even supposed to receive the nutrients from the little mushroom once it was done. Like, I’d seen that treant guy just straight up absorb his little saplings right back into his body, but I wasn’t completely convinced that it was going to work itself out like that for me, you know? Perhaps I could have just placed the thing right back onto my head where it came from, but after seeing it grow those little roots and squirm around, I wasn’t too big on the idea.
Besides, I had a mouth, unlike that treant guy, and that’s how I’ve basically always gotten my nutrients, so why not eat it, you know?
It looked all juicy and tasty and full of super good stuff for me anyways, so~
Bottoms up, right?
At first I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t digest very well since I’m carnivorous and all, but my digestive acid reigns supreme, and of course it melted down just as easily as anything! I could feel the nutrients from it smoothly flow into my seed just fine, although maybe the conversion rate wasn’t quite as good as it would have been if I’d directly eaten the orc. Still delicious though! Definitely nutritious just like always!
Oh, and you know what? I’d been thinking I’d have to wait for a new mushroom to grow where I’d plucked that one from, but it turns out that it just immediately regrew all on its own as soon as I finished eating it! How nice that it’s self returning! Really, seed, sometimes you do some great work~!
~~~
With the help of my cool new mushrooms alongside some good old fashioned classic shredding off some meaty parts and eating with my mouth, I managed to work my way through all the corpses in less than an hour! All of them!
And you might be thinking ‘but plant, how were you able to store all the nutrients? Wouldn’t you have gotten too full?’
And I’ll tell you, no I didn’t get too full!
Turns out my mushrooms had another special surprise for me!
Normally when I eat and get nutrients, I’m getting a combination of actually just raw physical nutrients that growing plants need, and magic! Honestly, I’m lazy and I just call it all nutrients since I get them from the same source and both of them get lessened when I do anything, but they actually do serve different functions. See, the nutrients are what sustains my body and lets it grow, just like any old regular plant you might come across. It literally gives me energy! But the magic is what lets me do… Well, magical things! And since I’m inherently a magical plant powered by magic, I need it to survive just like I do regular nutrients! Of course both things are equally super special and important, but they’re also pretty interchangeable to some extent. Like, I can use my flat out nutrients in exchange for magic with a decently high conversion rate, and I can use magic to run my body in place of nutrients at about the same cost. It’s not the most efficient conversion by any means, but it’s totally possible, for sure.
I’m like a car that can run off of multiple kinds of gas!
Or… Well, maybe that’s not the best analogy, but you get the gist!
So anyways, usually when I eat things with my mouth, I get a bit of that dead thing’s magic, but I mostly get its nutrients! It’s not the best for getting magic, but so far it's been my own real option, you know? However, when I use these mushrooms, I get the opposite! I get almost all of the thing's magic with these, and only a teensy bit of the nutrients that come along with it! And can you guess what this interesting magical body of mine has more storage space for? If you guessed ‘magic’ then you’d be totally and completely correct! Turns out I can consume vastly larger amounts of magic than I can nutrients! This seed of mine is practically a bank vault when it comes to holding magic when you compare to how it holds nutrients!
It’s sad to learn that my nutrients have actually secretly been a bottleneck for me this whole time.
Maybe I could have grown up more quickly if I went the treant route and always had these mushrooms instead of a mouth…
But nutrients are still equally important, right…?
I still totally need them too, since I can’t just run off of magic.
And besides, I really like eating, so…
Look, I have a mouth and I’m gonna use it, dammit!
Nutrients are important too!
~~~
I felt like a walking bomb by the time we left the mushroom forest. I had so much magic stored in me that I felt like I could easily decimate a town and then some if it were to all explode out! Heck, maybe I could create an entire forest in a matter of seconds if I put my mind to it! I should really learn how to grow some trees… Oooh, and maybe some bushes too… And perhaps a few mushrooms? Yeah, I think I'd definitely like to see some more huge mushrooms like the ones we just left around the place. We’ll see what can be done.
As we walked through the perfectly regular woods, I studied the trees really hard, looking at the differences between the different types and deciding which ones I’d like to grow in my forest. There were many that looked like the trees I was used to in my old world, but there were also some that looked fantastical, with wild colors, interesting flowers, or oddly shaped trunks and leaves.
I know I’ve seen all kinds of warped animals, fantasy creatures, and monsters so far (including myself), but somehow this study of the trees is what’s giving me the most ‘otherworldly’ feeling. Weird, right?
Of course, there’s nothing to say that I had to play by this world’s rules. What was stopping me from recreating the forests from my precious world? Don’t get me wrong, some of the unique trees and bushes I’d seen here definitely deserved a place in my dream forest. But the flowers? Ugh, don’t even get me started with the flowers in this place! I haven’t seen every flower in the world here for sure, but jeez louise, the ones I have seen super suck! They’re just so plain and unappealing! Thank goodness my seed let me grow the pretty flowers I liked from my old world on my head, because if it was these boring ones from here instead, I-
…Yeah, so the flowers definitely won’t be these.
After we walked around for another few hours it was time for Til to eat, so I scampered off a short distance away to experiment with all this magic I was holding. It was time to start my ‘gardening’ training! Let’s see, there was this one tree I saw while we were walking that was particularly beautiful. It was like a weeping willow, but its trunk was a lovely blue, and its fronds grew these pretty little cherry blossom looking flowers all along them. Really, it was the most striking tree that I’ve seen since coming here, and I’ve only maybe seen it about 4 times in all this forest that I’ve traveled, so it seems like it's pretty rare.
Hmm hm hmm…
Let’s just plant my little roots down, and-
Yup, this spot’s perfect!
Now let’s think of the tree really hard~
Aaand~!
…No, that’s not it. That's not right at all, in fact.
Seems I made a small blue bush with flowers on it instead. Maybe it’s because I kept thinking about the blue and flowery-ness more than I thought about the height? I really started out thinking of the whole picture, but then my mind kinda started wandering…
Maybe this needs more focus than I originally thought…
Okay, try number two! Let’s think about the whole picture the whole time! Think of a tree! Tree-ee-ee! Thick trunk! Blue bark! Willow shaped! Pretty pink flowers! Make it! MAKE it! Aaaand~!
Hmm…. Well, I made it, but it’s quite a bit smaller than I wanted. Guess that’s what I get for just worrying about getting the full picture and not actually imagining the appropriate size. Ugh…
You know…
Maybe I need to start off a bit smaller for now.
Let’s try making some perfect flowers instead, to cheer me up.
Let’s see, I already know I can make my camellia, so how about some lily of the valley this time? I never did try to plant one of those before. Would it maybe be able to heal just like mine does? That’d be really neat if it could, although there’s not really much of a point to it since it would chug my magic just like the one on my head does. Eh, at least it would still be a pretty flower, right? It's not like I have to activate the magic that's in it, after all.
Hmm hm hmm, lilies, lilies!
Let’s just grow a nice pretty bundle of you, and-
AAAAGH, MY NUTRIENTS! MY MAGIC! NOOOO, WHERE DID IT ALL GO?!
…
…
Okay. Alright. Fine.
I’m never growing these lilies again!
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AN: Heyyy, so I decided to set up a patreon! If you like my story enough to send a little bit of cash my way, $8 will give you access to the next 10 chapters of this little plant story of mine early. If that sounds like something you'd like, then head over to patreon.com/user?u=63286737 and support me, please!
Also also, I'm happy to say that the cover art for this story is finally finished! But I'm sad to say that it wasn't approved to be put up, which is why it isn't there. It doesn't break any of the rules, but they say they're worried that the bots that their advertisers use will still flag it for possible nudity, so they decided not to allow it. Until I can figure out what exactly I have to alter to not have them worried anymore, I'll have to leave it blank for now. However, if you want a sneak peek at the pic in all of its full unaltered (and not resized) glory, then you can totally go to that new patreon of mine and search images to see it, completely free of charge!
Thank you for your continued support!