A few hours flew by and as the 3 moons in the sky reached their peak, the wilted Flower sprung up with life once more. Mana was swiftly sucked in from the atmosphere, concentrating around the Flower to the point where one could see the glow from a kilometer away.

Within the cocoon of Mana, the wilted petals burst into flames and blew away due to the wind from the storm of Mana. In their place sprouted a single large petal that was whiter than snow, the petal perfectly surrounded the head of the flower and on it were beautiful intricate red lines that ran across its surface, and as Mana continued to pour into the Flowers, the lines began to start pulsing like a beating heart, before finally dying down and vanishing like an illusion.

Next, the withered stem started flashing green before slowly rising up with life once more, its previous brownish color faded and was soon dyed a darkish green color like paint dripping into water, the new stem looked as if a master artist handcrafted it out of the purest of jade. The stem even grew an extra 5 cm, allowing the Flower to stand tall above the red Flowers surrounding it.

And the shriveled up roots instantly inflated once more becoming even thicker, the Mana rapidly poured into the roots causing them to be restructured, making them even longer and more robust, allowing the roots to dig even deeper, piercing through anything in its path, spreading to the limits of the field of Flowers.

Finally, the Mana began to die down as the moons in the sky sank behind the mountains.

By the time all the excess Mana dissipated, the tri-moons had fully set behind the mountains and the sun had appeared across the eastern sky. The bell-like sound rang in the soul of the Flower once more as several new notification boxes appeared.

 

 

『Evolution to Monster is complete.』

『Generating stats.... setting all stats to 1.』

『New Race Detected... New Race Registered.』

『New Monster race: Setiliea (Spirit Flower)』

『Detected Unique Monster!』

『Re-calibrating... resetting stats... all stats set to 10.』

『Due to Racial Characteristics, stats will be reassigned... 』

『Transforming traits into Skills... Skills generated.』

『Conditions have been met... Titles are being acquired... Blessings are being assigned...』

『Congratulations, the User has obtained the Title: [Child of Nature] & [The One and Only!].』

『Congratulations, the User has obtained the Blessing: [Mark of C]』

After a while, the notifications disappeared on their own this time without anyone intervening. Along with the notification boxes, the memories the Flowers had of them disappeared along with them. This was because even though the Flower had evolved into a higher state of existence by gaining sentience, in the end, it was still just a Flower.

It understood that the boxes were good to it, and it was somehow able to understand what they were saying as if it always had the knowledge, but sadly the Flower wasn't able to comprehend that knowledge and decided to just ignore it. It ignored the fact it had achieved sentience and chose to simply forget about it due to having no way to realize the significance of the event.

After the notification boxes disappeared, the Flower simply went back to its peaceful life of staring at nothing but the sun and luring insects for food when necessary.

Rather than worrying about those mysterious boxes that it didn't understand, it decided it would rather sleep as it felt quite weak after its evolution, and hoped that tomorrow there would be more delicious insects nearby for it to feast on.

*RUSTLE* *RUSTLE*

Sadly, the peace that had returned did not stay for long.

Out from the bushes nearby, a huge boar slowly trotted out. The boar was almost 2 meters tall, covered with a gray fur that had a metallic sheen and fine muscles that seemed to be bursting with power.

However, as it left the shadows of the forest and entered into the light, one could see the wounds that covered the entirety of the boar's body.

Many arrows were sticking out of its back, sword wounds covered both sides of the beasts flank dying its brilliant gray fur red with blood, its back seemed to have been charred black from some sort of intense fire attack, aside from that even one of its eyes seemed to have been blinded due to a sword cut while its right tusk seemed to have been cut off. But the most grievous wound was the one on its left hind leg, its hind leg seemed to have been continuously pierced by a spear as it was completely covered in countless holes.

After finally entering the field of Flowers, the huge boar slowly looked around before noticing the white Flower, with its keen senses it was able to notice the unconcealed Mana that was naturally flowing from the Flower.

The reason as to why it had suddenly appeared was due to the Flower's evolution, or rather the huge burst of Mana that occurred during its evolution.

The huge amount of Mana used during the evolution was both a blessing and a curse for the Flower, while the burst of Mana did scare away most of the weak monsters living within the edge of the forest surrounding the Flower field, the burst of Mana was also strong enough that it drew in more of the powerful monsters within the forest depths, the huge boar being one of them.

Spotting its target it slowly limped its way across the sea of red Flowers even as its blood slowly dripped everywhere.

It needed that Flower, or to be more precise the Mana contained within the Flower. In its current state, it wouldn't be surprising if it dropped dead at any moment but if it were able to get to the Flower and devour it, then it could use the pure Mana to try and force a Rank up so that it can reignite its Vitality and live through these wounds.

That's why it was happy, even though it was slow due to its wounds it was still the first to reach the Flower. It truly believed that its fate was not to end here.

But unfortunately for it, fate had other plans for it.

By complete chance, one of the roots of the Flower was near the surface on the path the huge boar limping on. The blood that was dripping from the boar seeped deep into the ground and through pure chance, had some of it end up on the tip of the root of the Flower which the Flower proceeded to absorb.

It was because of that drop of blood that the Flower had woken up from its slumbering state. The Mana rich blood from the wounded boar was a delicacy for the newly born Flower monster, the nourishment and Mana within the blood were potent enough to help the Flower quickly recover from its momentary weakness due to its evolution. 

However, as more blood seeped into the ground and more was absorbed by the Flower, it eventually surpassed the newborn monster's ability to retain Mana.

As a result, the excess Mana caused it to become Mana-intoxicated for the first time.

The newborn Flower monster that knew no joy nor sorrow till now, that has never known of the existence of emotions, was drowned in a wave of absolute bliss from the Mana-intoxication.

But even after it calmed down, it couldn't forget that unknown euphoric feeling it felt. The euphoria it felt left such a deep imprint that it was able to force the Flower monster, for the first time since its birth, to move on and find the source of the bliss. 

The rush of new feeling that caused the Flower to make its move for the first time in the world was what led to the fate of the boar being sealed.

Without hesitation, it shot out its roots to the surface in order to find the source of the blood, while slowly sucking in the blood that had already seeped into the ground during its ascension.

After its roots broke through the soil, it slowly followed the trail of blood behind the huge boar, as the roots absorbed more blood it almost allowed the Flower to reach that feeling of intoxication once more but each time the feeling would stop before it could fully enjoy itself. 

The frustration it felt kept on piling up as it absorbed more and more blood until finally,

 

『A new skill has been created due to special circumstances.』

『Due to constantly drinking past your limit within a short time span, The Skill: [Intoxication Resistance (Weak) Lvl 0] has been created.』

 

The skill that crushed the flower's wish was born.

Luckily, or maybe not, the flower was not able to fully understand what the message read, but it was able to tell instinctively that it had gotten harder to reach that euphoric sensation once more.

Its frustration increased after realizing that but so did its speed, as if wishing to see if it could drink more than what its body could resist, the roots of the Flower reached the boar itself.

If this were at any other time, the huge boar would have already ripped apart the Flower's root that was touching it. Sadly, the injured beast was struggling just moving forward, there was no way for it to have the energy to do that it didn't have the energy to free itself from the Flower. No matter how much it tried to bite or tear at the roots, nothing worked as its current strength was weaker than even that of the newborn Flower.

Even as the boar struggled, the roots of the Flower continued to slowly slither up the boar's leg, sucking up the blood that was squirting out due to the boar's movements, before finally reaching the wound itself.

Sensing the source of its bliss, the Flower couldn't hold itself back anymore and without hesitation, it plunged its roots into the wound in order to drink up more of the blood. But no matter how much it sucked up the euphoria it felt from the first drop of blood didn't return.

This was due to the amount it had sucked up while traveling to the source of the blood, it had developed a slight resistance to the blood. The Flower that wished to feel blissful once more was not able to do so due to drinking too much in too short of a time frame.

So, the Flower willed its roots to dig deeper into the boar's body to drink even more of its blood, believing that it just had to drink faster but even that didn't work, there was a limit to the amount three roots can absorb at a time and the Flower slowly realized that too.

It's resistance to the bliss was building up faster and faster, before long the resistance would be so strong that it would surpass the amount the root could suck up.

When it realized that it started to think, to feel that rush once more, to feel that absolute bliss, What did it need to do? What could it do?

It used its newly formed intelligence for the first time, it started to think, pushing its simple mind to the limit before finally, it came up with one simple conclusion.

If three roots weren't enough then how about four? And if that wasn't enough then how about five? Six? It would just need to keep on adding more roots to outdo its resistance that was building up, as long as it could keep that up then it could keep on enjoying that bliss. It was a simple plan that would eventually reach a limit but the Flower didn't care, all it wanted was to feel that euphoria at that very moment.

With that, it turned its simple plan into motion.

The Flower willed its other roots to dig out of the soil and sent them to entangle the legs of the boar before slithering up its hind leg and drilling into the wound once more.

After 5 roots covered the wound entirely, the Flower sent its other roots to the other wounds on the boar's body, scabs were opened and scars were ripped anew, the Flower single-mindedly continued to look for openings in the boar.

However, even when all the possible wounds on the boar had the roots of the Flower dug deep inside, the Flower wasn't satisfied. So the Flower decided to aim for any and ALL openings of the boar, eyes were stabbed and mouths were stuffed, ears, nose and even the anus of the boar wasn't spared. As long as the Flower could find a hole, it would enter, as long as it was weak enough for the Flowers newly strengthen root to pierce then it wouldn't hesitate.

After virtually all the roots of the Flower had drilled out of the ground and rooted themselves in the boar was the Flower satisfied, moving its main body to land right on top of the boar's head it basked in the sunlight for a moment to rest after exerting itself from unanchoring its roots from the ground, before finally beginning its feast.

A second, a moment or maybe it was shorter. That was all it took for the Flower to instantly suck out half of the boar's blood.

 

『A new skill has been created due to a specific action.』

『Due to absorbing over 20 liters of blood, the Skill: [Blood Absorption Lvl 0] has been created』

 

The sudden loss of blood was too much for the boar that it finally caused its knees to buckle and collapse. Finally, the Flower was able to bask in that euphoria once more, but that bliss was once again cut short because along with the weakening of the boar's life-force, the Mana that once seemed overabundance within the boar also started to dissipate rapidly.

The Flower panicked when it noticed that, it wanted to keep on enjoying the feeling of bliss forever but now it seemed like it wouldn't last more than an hour if the boar's Mana kept on dissipating so quickly. After thinking and thinking about what to do, it finally decided, if the Mana was all going to dissipate anyways then it would just go to the source and drink up everything before it all disappeared!

So it began to search for another opening to go deeper, to find the core within the boar. While searching it realized that luckily the tense muscles of the boar had relaxed after the boat had collapsed, seeing this opportunity the Flower didn't hesitate to begin drilling even deeper into the boar to find the source of the Mana.

But no matter how much time past, no matter how much the Flower wished for its roots to dig even deeper into the boar, it didn't change the fact that the roots of the Flower were still much weaker than the muscles that covered the entirety of the boar. Even though the opportunity was present before it, the Flower was too weak to grasp it.

So it had to think again, it had to come up with a plan to get past the boar's muscle to find the source of the Mana before the boar died. It had to find another way besides just drilling into with its roots.

It couldn't drill through due to the muscle still being too hard for it, then is there a way to make it softer? The ability that it hadn't used ever since it was transformed, the ability that allowed it to survive so long within the field of red Flowers, that helped it get the nutrients it needed when the ground was insufficient. It had its acid-producing ability still!

The problem though was that it has never consciously made acid before, or rather it's consciousness was only just formed recently. Before anytime the Flower needed to use its acid, it'd do it instinctively.

But in order to accomplish its goal, it couldn't complain and had to do its best. Using its roots to sense the Mana within the boar, it looked for the place where it dissipated the fastest, where the highest concentration of Mana was located. After feelings its way throughout the entire body of the boar, it found that there were two places filled to the brim with energy, one was located in its chest while the other was located directly beneath the Flower in the boar's brain.

The Flower wanted to quickly get the Mana before it fully dissipated but it didn't know which location the Mana was concentrated in, while it was panicking, it realized that the Mana density within the boar that once seemed endless seemed to be slowly reaching its end and that it had no more time to think.

So, it did the only logical thing to it in this situation, drill at both locations at the same time!

The first set of roots went for the brain since it was both the closest and seemed the easiest to get into, piercing even deeper through the eyes of the boar, it tried to drill into the skull of the beast but it was too hard for the Flowers soft roots and even the acid seemed like it would take a long while before it would melt the skull.

So the Flower had to find another way, a way to bypass the skull and quickly. As it was scanning for and opening to the first source of energy, it realized that there were actually tiny holes that connected the eyes to the interior of the skull.

The problem though was that the roots of the Flower were too bulky to enter those tiny openings, realizing that no matter how much it slammed its roots into the opening that it wouldn't work, the Flower had to find a way to make the hole bigger for its roots to fit. But no matter how much the Flower thought, no matter how much it tried to think o a solution, no idea came to mind.

As it continued to glare at the holes, it realized something else.

Why did it need to make the holes bigger? Because its roots were too bulky to fit in.

But why did it need the roots to fit in? So that it could reach the source of the energy.

Then here was the major question, did it have to be the root that reaches the source of energy? The answer was No.

As long as it was a part of itself then it was fine, it didn't matter if it was its stem, petals, or roots, as long as a part of the Flower was close enough to the source then it could absorb the mana for sure.

And looking at the holes, the Flower knew that it had a part of it that could fit. Its root hair, those were the only parts of the Flower that were small enough to fit into those holes.

Forcing its root hair to the holes, it followed the nerves of the eye of the boar all the way to their point of origin before finally reaching the boar's brain where the first source of energy was located.

There located within its skulls was the brain of the beast, and on that brain was a yellow crystal that seemed to be embedded into it. That crystal was the first source of energy the Flower felt, overflowing with a boundless aura of the earth.

Feeling the overwhelming energy within that crystal, the Flower willed its root hairs to cover the entire surface of the crystal, after making sure that no exposed opening on the crystal, the Flower started the feast. 

It forcefully started to produce its acid to melt the crystal so that the energy contained within can explode outwards within the confines of the Flower's cacoon of root hairs, instead of having it flow throughout the body of the boar before finally dissipating into the world.

The reason why the Flower didn't pierce through the brain to fully wrap around the crystal was due to it instinctively knowing that it was only because of the boar being alive that the Mana hadn't dissipated yet, and that if it were to destroy the soft flesh the crystal was embedded in, the boar would die and something bad would happen to the crystal.

The second set of roots went for the energy source in the boar's chest. Diving even deeper into the wounds of the boar, they eventually found the veins, arteries, and even capillaries that ran throughout the boar's body.

Taking advantage of them, the roots dove into the blood vessels and followed them all the way back to the heart of the boar, there within the septum that separated the boar's ventricles, a red crystal burning with Vitality that pulsed with every beat of the boar's heart it was the second source of energy the Flower felt.

Feeling the overflowing Vitality that surpassed any of the other limbs of the boar, the Flower willed its roots to pierce through the septum where the crystal was embedded and directly wrap around the crystal into a cocoon, before secreting the acid into it and drowning the red crystal. 

With all the preparation in place, it was time to feast!

The reason why it only secreted its natural acid and not the one enchanted by the system was because of 2 simple reasons.

The first was because it instinctively knew that if its Mana-filled acid were to be used, then while the crystals would be dissolved instantly, at the same time, something bad would happen to the energy within the crystals. While is why the Flower chose to use its normal acid, which would take longer to melt but it knew that nothing would happen to the delicious energy in the crystals.

The second reason was the most important one, it didn't know how to use its new ability. While it was told by the system that its ability was transformed into a Skill or something like that, it couldn't remember how to activate the Skill or any Skill in general! 

The crystal that melted first was the red crystal, while it seemed like it was gonna last for a long time due to the overwhelming amount of Vitality that could be felt from it. In truth, the reason why the Vitality could be felt even without touching the crystal was due to the crystal being cracked.

The red crystal was exactly as it looked, a crystallized essence of the boar's Vitality that was created from a Skill. It was meant to bathe the blood that flowed in the boar's body with a surplus of Vitality so that the wounds on its body could heal faster and so that it would have the ability to draw more stamina when it was needed another burst of energy.

However, it seemed like the battle the boar went through before appearing before the Flower, caused the boar to overuse the crystal leading it to fracture and causing its stored up Vitality to slowly dissipate away. Likewise, the reason the Mana from the yellow crystal could be felt without direct contact was due to it being cracked from overuse.

Normally no matter how overuse these crystal were, they wouldn't have cracked normally. Instead, they would have just dimmed due to the essence within being drained. The only reason why they cracked was due to the usage of Skills that overdraft one's Mana and Vitality, to the point where even the crystals themselves end up being used as a source of power.

However, the Flower had no way of knowing this and even if it did, it wouldn't care. The Flower continued to secrete its acid until all of the crystal had melted into a soup-like substance within the cocoon, but even that didn't last long before the Flower had its roots suck up whatever was left within the cocoon.

 

Once again ignoring the notification box, the Flower was finally able to concentrate on the crystal within the boar's head. Even while it was busy devouring the rich Vitality of the boar, it didn't forget to continue dowsing the yellow crystal in acid but even after it was done devouring the red crystal, there still wasn't much progress on the yellow crystal. 

All it could do was continue making acid and wait, the good thing was that it was used to waiting.

Waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for the bugs to come, its whole life before its evolution revolved around waiting for things to happen around it.

That's why it didn't matter how tough the crystal was, as the Flower knew that it too will eventually break and become its food.

One hour was all it took, that was how long the crystal was able to last before finally giving in. Cracks had finally appeared on the crystal and slowly, new cracks kept on appearing by the second before finally covering the entirety of the crystal.

However, along with the crystal cracking came the boar's final resistance.

To the boar, the plant was a lower level existence compared to it, something so puny that it wouldn't have deigned to even give the Flower a passing glance when it was at its peak, even after being forced to use berserk Skills continuously during its fight and sustaining life-threatening wounds, the boar's pride still refused to believe that the puny Flower could be a threat to it.

It was due to that pride that it had even though it could barely even use a fraction of its full power that it ended up as the Flower's fertilizer.

The reason as to why it stopped resisting the Flower soon after the Flower stated to wantonly ravage its body, was due to not having any more strength to resist the Flower as half its blood was instantly sucked out of its body causing it to faint. But even after it woke up due to the pain of its Vitality Essence Crystal being shattered, it still refused to put up a useless struggle.

It knew that it was too late now, that there was no hope of a complete recovery even if it somehow found a way to kill the Flower without further damaging its own body. Originally, it wished to devour the Flower and used the abundant Mana within it to help boost the efficiency of the Vitality Essence Crystal to accelerate its regeneration speed, but with the crystal destroyed and the Flower having pierced through and drained everything else within the boar's body, its plans were shattered before they even started.

Since it was going to die no matter what, it decided that rather than uselessly struggling against the Flower, it would come up with a way to kill it along with itself.

It was going to forcefully execute Mana Burst, a Skill that increases one's stats by permanently burning away one's Mana, it would then proceeded to cast a spell in this situation, knowing that it would fail and cause a Mana explosion.

This way it could at least bring down the newborn monster that dared to step on its pride along with itself, it would never accept dying from its wounds caused by the damned humans nor would it accept merely being fertilizer for this puny newborn monster. Its pride would never accept that, it would only accept being killed by the strongest or on its own terms.

 The only regrets it had were the fact that it wouldn't be able to bring the humans to hell with it, and that its poor children would be left alone within its cave without anyone to take care of them. It could only pray that the heavens would bless at least one of them with the luck to survive.

And it was because of that, because the boar offered prayers to the heavens for its children instead of instantly executing its plan, that the final chance it had to live was closed forever.

While the Flower noticed the flow of Mana changing abruptly, it didn't understand the implications of it so it chose to ignore the change. Instead, the Flower focused on the crystal that was close to shattering. Realizing that the crystal was not going to last much longer, it decided that it rather not risk any wastage of Mana.

Thinking that it didn't matter anymore what happened to the squishy stuff, as the crystal was about to explode, the Flower ruthlessly pierced through it with its root hairs, wrapped around the crystal tightly before tearing it off the boar's brain. Instantly killing the boar before it could execute its final struggle and trampling on the boar's pride for the last time.

 

『User has landed the killing blow on the Rank 8 Monster: Mother War Boar, Altria, The Lord of the West, Exp: +470』

『User has obtained the Title: [West Lord Slayer]』

『User has unlocked the Achievement: [Kill Steal]』

『Level up, Congratulations, you are now level 2! All stats +2. Racial Bonus: INT+ 1, VIT +1』

 

The boar's death was also the trigger that led to the collapse of the crystal, the mana inside rampaged after losing the guidance of the boar's soul breaking apart the crystal that they were contained inside and started to dissipate.

But even quicker than their rate of dissipation was the Flowers rate of absorption, while the shards of the crystal were melted down within the pool of acid inside the cocoon, the rampaging mana was swiftly devoured by the Flower, allowing it to once again reach that state of absolute bliss.

The bliss felt after absorbing all the rampaging Mana and the shards of the crystal overwhelmed the sense of the Flower. The feeling of bliss came like a rapid tide and instantly drowned the Flower.

While its mind enjoyed the euphoria, the soul of the newborn flower realized the danger. The newborn soul of the Flower knew it couldn't handle the sudden influx of emotion and Mana any longer and that if it were to continue drowning within the overwhelming Mana, it would be destroyed from the inside out due to its low capacity.

So while it didn't wish to give up that euphoric feeling, it needed to do so if it wished to stay alive. Accepting that fact, the flower reluctantly expelled all the rampaging Mana that it couldn't process but unbeknownst to it, rampaging Mana is easily agitated.

The moment the Mana found the opening the Flower made, the rampaging Mana rushed towards it trying to escape the Flower as fast as possible. But even that hole wasn't enough, so the rampaging Mana rampaged within the Flower, flowing to every corner and finding every single hole within the Flower to escape from.

It was only due to the Flower's racial characteristics that its Magic Veins weren't torn to shreds due to the rampaging Mana flowing through them. Plus the expulsion of the rampaging Mana gave a small benefit to the Flower, which was expanding the size of its Mana Veins while young, allowing it to grow even bigger as the Flower matures.

Finally, after expelling the Mana into the surrounding flower field, causing the red flowers around it to become a rare type of Magic Herb, the flower slumped down in exhaustion and without being able to fight back, the flower once more fell asleep.

 

『Due to staying conscious even after being subjected to pain beyond what you've ever experienced, the Endurance(END) stat was created. END +10』